Female Issues
by KolKolKol
Summary: Basically what I think would happen if L were chained to a female. Crack ensues, with actual plot after a while. This isn't a romance!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Like I said in the summary, this is mainly what I think would happen if L were chained to a woman. THIS WILL NOT TURN INTO SLASH. I WILL NOT PAIR L WITH THIS OC; there's a reason I didn't choose "romance" as one of the genres. There we go, now that that's cleared up...**

**Chapter One: In which Ryuzaki meets a weird chick, and all hell breaks loose.**

"D'you think it's smart to chain him to a girl?" Soichiro asked.

"Probably not, but what choice do we have?" Aizawa countered. "When's she being brought here, anyhow?"

"Matsuda's bringing her," Soichiro said, checking his watch. "They should be here soon."

"You chose Matsuda to get her?" Mogi questioned, arching an eyebrow. "Forget the whole L situation; is that smart?"

"Obviously so; there they are." Soichiro gestured to the elevator, where four people were emerging. One was Matsuda, happily chatting away and smiling. Two security guards walked behind the naive man and the girl next to him. She was probably in her early twenties, or maybe nineteen. Her dark brown eyes were glazed over, like the guards', from listening to Matsuda. Her arms were behind her back, stuck together with handcuffs.

"Ryuzaki, where are you?" Soichiro asked, glancing around behind him.

"Right here, Yagami-san," L replied from next to him. Soichiro hadn't noticed the detective's arrival, which wasn't exactly uncommon. Nor was the fact that L was finishing off a chocolate bar, which had been schlepped to him by Watari. Soichiro pinched the bridge of his nose as Matsuda and his group approached.

"Good afternoon gentlemen," Soichiro said to Matsuda and the two guards. The latter two left instantly at Soichiro's word, probably ecstatic to get away from Matsuda's incessant rambling.

"And this would be Kai Hiroko," he said to the girl beside Matsuda. She nodded, looking around warily.

"They said I'm supposed to be under surveillance," Hiroko asked. "But they wouldn't tell me anything else."

"What is going to happen is that you're going to be chained to this insomniac until he's sure you're not Kira," Light explained, gesturing to L. The detective turned to him.

"No need to be so blunt, Light-kun," he said to him. L then looked back to Hiroko. "But yes, that is essentially the plan."

"Okay, chained?" she asked. "Can we clarify a bit?"

In response, Light held up the shackles that had once been used to bind him to L. Hiroko's eyes widened slightly, then became defensive.

"No. No way. I'm not being tied up to anyone," she said. "Not in a million years."

"Well, this is simply too bad," L commented, "as you have no choice in the matter. You are a high suspect in the Kira case, and therefore you will be under surveillance."

"Yeah, 'under surveillance' doesn't mean strapping my arm to you," Hiroko claimed. "It's perversion, and just plain weird!"

"Actually it isn't," L pointed out, "as it is for safety purposes. Until you are cleared from all suspicion, you will wear these chains. And that is final," he added as Soichiro snapped one of the shackles to Hiroko's arm. She tried to jerk away, but hadn't been expecting it, and now she could only watch hatefully as L clamped the other end to his own wrist.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked exasperatedly. "Stop my whole life because of a false accusation? I've got friends and stuff, you know."

"If you wish to go on any social outings, I must accompany you," L said.

"You're kidding, right?" Hiroko asked hopefully.

"Nope, he's not," Light told her, smiling grimly. "Best of luck; I was tied to this lunatic for over a year, almost. It's not so bad; once you lose your sanity it's tolerable. But he's not kidding about the whole accompanying thing; I'd advise not setting up any dates while you're tied. It's downright awkward."

"No need to make it sound so repulsive, Light-kun," L said to the younger male.

"Need I remind you that I'm the one with the most experience in this?" Light asked rhetorically. "I was bound to you for what seemed like forever. Need I remind you that Misa still thinks you're creepy?"

Hiroko inwardly groaned. "Fine," she said to L, putting on her most defiant face. "I'll be tied to you for as long as you freaking want. But let me tell you that I am going to be the most insufferable female you've ever met."

"I do believe Misa has already claimed that title," L commented. For a second, Light looked as if he would defend the model, but thought better of it and just nodded in agreement.

And that was how Hiroko was sitting less that two feet away from L in the Task Force headquarters, staring at him. Well, more at his weird posture; that couldn't be healthy for his back. And in the three hours that she had been chained to him, she hadn't seen him eat anything of substance. Hiroko sighed and looked back to her own computer. Since she had aced her technology course in high school and first year college, she had been given the task of repairing a few laptops, black hair tied behind her head to prevent it from getting in her face.

"Is something the matter?" L asked, not moving his eyes from his own computer. "You do not seem pleased."

"Why would I be pleased?" Hiroko asked. "I'm stuck here, chained to you, being accused of someone I'm not."

"Every time you say that, your Kira percentage raises by two percent," L simply said.

From the next station over, Hiroko heard Light call, "Better get used to that; he says it all the time. And I do mean,_ all_ the damn time."

Hiroko went back to the laptop, flipping it upside down and unscrewing the case to get a look at the wiring. After a few pokes, she determined that a few wires were loose, and a screw had fallen out on the inside. She could fix the wires, but the screw would require tools.

"Ryuzaki," she asked. L didn't move. "Ryuzaki!" she said a bit louder. He finally glanced at her questioningly. "I need a screwdriver," she explained. L, looking slightly put off, dug around in a drawer for a moment. He retrieved candy wrappers, a stack of dusty papers, and finally, a small tool kit. The detective tossed it to Hiroko and quickly resumed his work.

Glaring at the laptop, Hiroko began working with the screwdriver to get the little screw back in and not electrocute herself at the same time. "Dammit," she muttered as the screw came loose again.

"Do you often voice such vulgarities?" L asked. He had noticed her plight out of the corner of his eye, but refused to take his sight off the spreadsheet on his monitor.

"When I'm frustrated," Hiroko said shortly. "There, done." She transferred the laptop to a cart beside her and picked up another one.

After another hour of working, with Hiroko becoming more and more annoyed by L's behavior, she began fidgeting in boredom. Eventually, she stopped working on her laptop and looked around the desk, searching for something.

"Do you require anything, Hiroko-kun?" L asked.

"Where's the key to these damned things?"

"And why would you need the key? As I said, you are not allowed to unlock the chain at any time," L said. "What purpose would they serve if I allowed you to run off any time you pleased?"

"So I'm not allowed to go anywhere without you?" she clarified. L nodded once. "Then how am I supposed to go to the bathroom?"

"I would accompany you, of course."

"What?" Hiroko's voice had risen an octave. "Okay, forget the chains. Now this is creepy."

"This is my job," L explained patiently. "I observe you to determine if you are or are not Kira. If you are, you will be arrested. If not, you will be cleared and unchained."

"Come on! I just want to use the bathroom! I'll come straight back here, I swear."

"No," L said simply. "I will not unlock you. If you wish to use the facilities, I will come with you to accommodate the chain."

"No, no, I'll wait. I can wait," Hiroko said, staring back at the laptop in front of her. It had a virus from a time when Matsuda had gone to some strange website, trying to follow a lead. Perhaps it was best if he just stuck to playing solitaire like usual, Hiroko thought. Thirty seconds after Hiroko's outburst, she finally sighed and stood, yanking L up after her.

"Fine, you're coming with," she said in defeat. "But we're going to the damn store first."

"But why?" L asked, confused. "The facilities are just down the hall-"

"Because I need tampons!" Hiroko said, a bit louder than necessary. She didn't really need tampons; she was just frustrated and already fed up with the detective. A few of the members of the Task Force looked up - including a snickering Light - also curious as to L's response. He merely furrowed his eyes a bit, but conceded, calling Watari to bring the car around front.

After Hiroko and L left, followed by Watari, Light looked to Matsuda, who was also refraining from laughing too loudly.

"Do you think Ryuzaki even knows what tampons are?" Matsuda asked, tilting his head to the side a bit. Light thought about it and shrugged.

"Who knows what enters that guy's mind?"

At the nearest convenience store, Hiroko was getting a little pissed. Everyone was staring at her, and she couldn't blame them. She was basically handcuffed to this weird slouchy guy who seemed eternally hungover, and the slightest bit ADD. L, hands in his pockets, seemed to be trying to look anywhere but in front of him. Hiroko took a slight satisfaction in watching the brief flash of comprehension on L's face when he realized what it was she was after. She made sure to stay in the aisle for longer than truly necessary; it was going to be one of the highlights of her time spent chained to L, she could deduce.

Finally taking pity on the detective, Hiroko randomly took a box off the shelf. She couldn't help notice how L's pace seemed to quicken when he realized they could get out of the aisle. Instead of heading to the register, L swerved and moved to the back of the store. He grabbed a can of soda and a few packs of chocolate.

"Do you eat nothing but sugar?" Hiroko finally asked.

"Yes," L said as they approached the checkout. The cashier gave them a funny look as she rung up their items. Hiroko had to admit that they made quite a weird sight. Hiroko tried not to meet her eyes when she handed the woman the money.

Once back in the car, Watari driving them back to Task Force, Hiroko chanced another question at L.

"What's with the sitting thing?" she asked.

"Sitting like this increases my reasoning abilities by forty percent," L told her.

"How much longer do I have to spend stuck with you?"

"Hiroko-san, it hasn't even been one day yet," L told her. "In fact, it has been five hours."

"Feels like five years," Hiroko muttered, staring out the window. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost imagine that it was her mom in the front seat, driving her to soccer practice in the eleventh grade. However, the clinking of the chain and L's constant mutterings shattered her imaginary world often.

"Uh, I think they're back," Light said, turning his head toward the source of the commotion. L and Hiroko had indeed arrived, and they were arguing about something rather heatedly.

"The fact remains that you tripped me to fall down the stairs," L claimed, rubbing his arm.

"You idiot! Why would I trip you? When you fell down the stairs, the chain yanked me after you and I fell, too! I'm not that stupid!" Hiroko was yelling, limping along after him.

"Arrogance raises your Kira probability by one percent."

"Oh will you just shut up?"

"Fine then, if that wasn't on purpose, then neither was this." Light smirked as L quickly darted his foot out into Hiroko's path. Landing hard on the floor, she glared up at him and scowled.

"You bastard! How was that not on purpose?" she asked furiously.

"Then admit that you are Kira and you were hoping that by tripping me, I would die!"

"Excuse me for having bad coordination! I'm not Kira! If I were, you'd be dead by now, I swear to God!"

"That comment raised your Kira probability by five percent."

"I told you to shut it!"

"I don't want to."

"Then I'll make you!"

"With what, may I ask?"

Light and Matsuda weren't even trying to hide their amusement now. "Who do you think kills the other first?"

_**A/N: ...and that's the first chapter. I know it's weird, and it doesn't follow the actual story plot. Get over it. It's just my drabbles. There is no following of timeline, it's not written in any "arc" or whatever. :D  
**_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Yay, second chapter! I've been working on this in my spare time, since I'm at a writing program for this week. It's great, except for the fact that my roommate sucks. Anyhow, you don't want to hear about my life. :D**

After L and Hiroko's little quibble had died down, Soichiro had pulled them back to their stations. L was still working; Hiroko had her face in her hands. It was midnight, and everyone had already vacated.

"Ryuzaki, can I go to bed?" Hiroko asked. "I'm tired."

"No, I'm working," L said.

"But everyone else already left three hours ago."

"You'll have to get used to working long hours."

Hiroko sighed and finally just put her head on folded arms, closing her eyes. "Fine," she mumbled. "I'll sleep here." She was slightly put off when L didn't even acknowledge her statement, but she wasn't about to drag him anywhere else. Anyway, she didn't even know where they were staying.

Sometime during the night - or in their case, morning - Hiroko must have fallen asleep. When she opened her eyes next, it was bright in the room, and people were filing around.

"Oh, God," Hiroko groaned, picking her head up and stretching the kinks out of it. "You can not tell me that you worked all through the night and left me sleeping with my face on a stapler."

"Actually, that is precisely what happened, Hiroko-chan," L told her. Hiroko ignored him and stood up. "You're not going anywhere," L said automatically. It was almost like the first few months of having Light chained to him all over again.

"Oh yes I am. Since I slept at my desk, I need a shower and to brush my teeth," Hiroko said. "And I wouldn't mind changing my clothes. I actually care about my personal hygiene."

"I'm working," came that response again.

"I don't really care." The look L gave her was enough to discourage nearly anyone from keeping up their end of an argument.

Hiroko tried looking to Light - L's former captive - for support. He shrugged and gave Hiroko a look that clearly said "good luck, you're on your own". Hiroko glared at basically anyone in the general vicinity as she resumed fixing the laptops.

"This is ridiculous," Hiroko claimed. "Why am I fixing laptops? How is this going to help prove I'm not Kira?"

"The mission is to prove whether you are or are not Kira," L said, "not that you aren't."

"But I'm not! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, two percent," she recited upon seeing L's mouth open. "I'm just saying, isn't this a little extreme? Shouldn't you, oh I don't know, follow me around or something?"

"We already have," L said, "for about three weeks. You talk to people who aren't there, behave as though someone is telling you to do things, and somehow disappear from our surveillance weekly."

"I can explain all that, though. I talk to myself all the time; it's how I stop myself from going crazy," Hiroko explained. "As for the disappearing weekly thing, I've got therapy, and to get there, I have to go through a shitload of traffic. Your guys must've lost me in the sea of cars or something. But as for the behavior thing, I've always been odd; something you should know about."

"Intriguing," L said, and went back to work. Hiroko stared.

"After all that, you're not even going to consider it?" she asked disbelievingly. "I explained two out of the three things you pinned me for."

"We'll have to check on your excuses," L said, "and make sure you have an alibi."

"Why would I have an alibi? I was driving to therapy. That's not exactly a family activity, you know. It's boring; whoever I'm with sits in the waiting room for an hour while I talk to my therapist about my brief fits of OCD. Boring."

"If you have no alibi for your whereabouts, then you'll need to remain under observation here with us," L decide, "which was the point in the first place."

"Aw, great." Hiroko sat back heavily in her chair, sighing and closing her eyes. Her neck still hurt from sleeping at such a weird angle, and she was pretty sure the stapler left a mark on her cheek. The girl jumped a bit when her phone rang from her pants pocket. Hurriedly flipping it open, she forgot to check the caller ID.

"Hello? ...Oh, hi Mother." Hiroko mentally groaned and put her forehead down on the table. She forgot to tell her mother about this particular situation. "No, I'm fine...yeah, I know...uh huh...fine..."

Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed L with his hand held out expectantly. Hiroko picked her head up, arching an eyebrow, mouthing 'you want to talk?' to him. L nodded.

"Uh, Mom, hang on a sec, someone wants to talk to you..." Hiroko dropped the phone into L's hand. He held it weirdly, the top pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

"Greetings Ms. Kudo," he said quickly, "your daughter Hiroko is under suspicion in the Kira case, and is therefore being investigated thoroughly." L paused a moment, a blank look on his face, listening to Hiroko's mother. "She is chained to me. ...Yes, quite literally. Until a conclusion is reached." L listened for a second more and then passed the cell phone back to Hiroko.

"Mom?" Hiroko's eyes widened a bit, then she groaned like she had when she was a teenager. "Mom, seriously, don't suggest it. ... I'm serious Mother, don't. But - fine, fine. Just don't say I didn't warn you." Hiroko snapped the phone shut and glared at it.

"You certainly do seem upset," L commented.

"And you'll be sorry you ever chained me to you," Hiroko said carelessly.

"Kira percentage has been raised by four percent."

Hiroko seethed and silently cursed at herself for not seeing that one coming. "My mother is making us come to dinner tonight," she told him. "Something about how if her daughter's going to be chained to some guy she's got to meet him."

"Fine," L said. Hiroko arched an eyebrow; she'd expected more resistance.

"Fine? I tell you that you're going to have to be in the same house, eating normal food, with my mother, father, three little brothers, and you say fine?"

"Yes," L said. Hiroko felt like going back to sleep on the stapler.

"Will you stop pulling on the chain?" Hiroko hissed. They were on the subway, riding to the woman's family's home. Many people were staring at the two, some with curiosity, some with smiles and indulgence, others with just plain disgust. Before their train adventure, Hiroko had convinced L to let her take a shower. She soon found that it was one of the most awkward things she'd ever done. She knew L didn't care - and in any case, she had forced him to turn the opposite direction - but it was still extremely weird. Well, at least she was wearing clean clothes.

"Why?" L asked.

"Because every time you move it, it makes noise. Every time it makes noise, more people stare." Hiroko explained this like she was talking to her little brothers; simply and slowly.

"I am quite aware of that fact," L told her. He continued to look around the train, staring at people - and consequently making them uncomfortable, some choosing to glare at him - which yanked the chain. The noise, while slightly muffled by the roaring of the subway, was still pretty obvious, and rather loud if one cared to listen harder. Which, of course, many people did.

Hiroko groaned. "Thank God this is our stop," she said as she all but dragged L out of the subway car.

They bickered most of the five-minute walk to Hiroko's old home; L's manner of doing just about everything was proving to be quite annoying to the woman.

"I suggest that you stop arguing; as I have said, I am slightly childish in that I hate to lose," L told her.

"You're childish all the time!" Hiroko claimed as they reached the house. "And I'm not going to argue anymore since I don't want my family to think I'm cuffed to a lunatic!" She emphasized her point by knocking harshly on the wooden door, glaring at L.

"Good afternoon!" Hiroko's mother, Aika, greeted with a wide smile.

Hiroko returned the smile and bowed to her mother. "Nice to see you, Mom," she said. "Where are the boys? And Dad?"

"Your father is helping me cook, and the boys are racing around upstairs," Aika said. Then, inevitably, she turned to L. Hiroko wanted to just close her eyes and leave when she saw the first impression the detective was giving her mother. L was slouching, staring with eternally-tired-yet-wide eyes, and biting his thumb. As usual. Aika looked as though she was wondering what the government was playing at, and Hiroko silently agreed.

"Mom, this is Ryuzaki. Ryuzaki, Aika," Hiroko introduced. L blinked, but was silent. Aika didn't seem to know what to say, and the three stood in an awkward silence for a minute. Well, it was really only awkward for Aika; L didn't care, and Hiroko was just getting used to it, letting her mind wander.

"Well, er, come on in," Aika finally said, stepping aside and holding the door open. "Hiroko, the boys have been so happy to hear that you're coming to visit; you haven't been home in a while."

"I've been busy, Mom," Hiroko claimed, tugging L inside. The noise from the chain seemed to make Aika notice it that much more.

"You really should visit more," Aika scolded maternally. Hiroko was going to reply but was interrupted by what L believed was a stampede down the staircase. In actuality, it was not a stampede, but three six-year-old boys. Close enough.

"Hiroko! Hiroko!" they yelled, launching themselves around her. She grinned and tousled the dark hair of the nearest boy. L watched with slightly wider eyes, trying to take in the energy and loudness of the children. It was starting to give him a headache, actually.

"All right," Hiroko eventually called. "Settle down, settle down. Boys!"

Hiroko didn't continue until the three had stopped leaping around and were looking up at her curiously.

"Boys, this is our guest, Ryuzaki. Ryuzaki, these are Botan, Jiro, and Mamoru," Hiroko said, pointing to each boy in turn. "And I wouldn't bother trying to match the names with the faces, because they're identical."

"Actually, not exactly," L said. "Botan has slightly lighter eyes, Jiro is taller, and Mamoru has a different hair style."

Hiroko stared, an eyebrow arched. Even she had problems telling her little brothers apart, and here L was doing it in a second. Well, she figured, it's why he's the best detective in the world. Somehow, it only increased her annoyance.

"Hi Ryuzaki!" Botan yelled happily, at what seemed to be the top of his lungs.

"Yeah, hey Ryuzaki!" Jiro followed suit, quickly copied by Mamoru, who seemed determined to bust someone's eardrums.

"Boys, boys, let's not deafen the neighborhood before dinner," Hiroko ordered, smiling. "Why don't you go help Dad in the kitchen?"

"Dad told us to stay out of the kitchen," Jiro said sadly.

"Yeah, e'er since we knocked over that pot," was Botan's contribution.

"Made a loud noise, though!" Mamoru claimed. He was the only one who seemed unfazed by the fact that they had been banned from the kitchen.

"I'll bet it did," Hiroko told him soothingly. "Mom, how long until dinner is ready?"

"I'd say about ten minutes," Aika said. "I'll go help your father."

"All right boys, how clean is your room?" Hiroko asked, her tone turning slightly maternal.

"Uh..." The boys made noncommittal noises, scuffed their feet on the floor, and basically did anything to avoid looking at their sister.

Hiroko clapped her hands three times and pointed to the stairs. "All right guys, inspection time. March!"

Her brothers quickly made a race out of who could run up the stairs first, pushing and shoving each other into the walls and banisters in their excitement. Hiroko and L followed more slowly, and stopped completely when they found that entering the boys' room would prove hazardous and perhaps fatal.

There may have been beds in the room, and perhaps a window or two, but the main points of a bedroom were choked and strangled with clothing, toys, and numerous items that L wasn't even sure he wanted to identify. He couldn't even tell if there was a carpet; not even his room looked as bad as this.

"Okay guys, you've got work to do here," Hiroko said. "In the ten minutes that Mom and Dad prepare dinner, you three must clean all this up. And yes," she added upon hearing the moans, "I said clean it up, not shove it under the beds or in the closet. Let's make it a race, okay? Ready? Set? ...Go!"

Immediately, the three boys raced to pick things up and shove them in their respective places. At some points, Hiroko and L could barely see the boys under the sea of crap.

"I do not believe I have seen a bedroom like this since I last visited Near," L commented, watching Hiroko's brother's race.

"Near? What's that? ...or is it a who?" Hiroko asked curiously.

"Oh, never mind," L said, dismissing the question with a flick of his hand. Hiroko would have pursued it, but had to break away to restate the no-shoving-things-under-the-bed rule to Jiro.

"Well, their room doesn't usually look this bad," Hiroko said upon releasing Jiro. "Our parents have simply been rather busy, and haven't had the time to tell them to clean it up."

"Sister," Botan wailed from the floor. "I hurted my foot!"

" 'Hurted' isn't a word, Botan-chan," Hiroko said, but she got up from her spot on the floor and dragged L through the slightly-diminished piles of junk to take a closer look.

"How did you hurt your foot, Botan-chan?" Hiroko asked, sitting cross-legged next to her brother.

"I stepped on something," Botan said. "Think it was the pencils."

"Well, it's not bleeding," Hiroko noted, "and you didn't so much as scrape the skin. You'll be fine."

"Okay, Sister," Botan said agreeably, and disappeared back into the piles of playthings.

"Boys, Ryuzaki, Hiroko! Dinner's ready!" Aika called up the stairs.

Hiroko surveyed the earlier disaster area. "All right, that's clean enough," she announced. "Time for dinner; downstairs!"

And the stampede resumed, the boys trampling the already-worn carpet of the stairs and into the dining room. L assumed that the tall, slightly angry-looking man standing at the head of the table was Hiroko's father.

"Father, meet Ryuzaki. Captor, this is my father, Tadashi," Hiroko said after bowing deeply to her father.

"So you're Ryuzaki," Tadashi said, eying L with curiosity and slight malice. If L noticed, he didn't care.

"Yes, that is me."

"Dad," Hiroko said, "please not in front of the boys."

"After dinner," Tadashi growled. Hiroko nodded respectfully and turned back around to her brothers.

"Boys, take your seats!" she called. Botan and Jiro obeyed immediately, but Mamoru tried to cling onto Hiroko's leg, looking up at her. "What do you want, Mamoru-chan?" Hiroko asked.

"I'm not hungry, Sister," Mamoru claimed, blinking his wide black eyes in what he obviously thought was a pitiful manner.

"And you'd like to skip dinner to...?" Hiroko asked indulgently.

"Go upstairs and play video games," Mamoru finished. "Please, Sister? Please~?"

"No, Mamoru," Hiroko said sternly. "You are a part of this family, and that means that you will sit at this table and eat dinner with the rest of us."

"Aw, Sister," Mamoru began to whine, but halted when he saw his sister's expression. "Okay, okay," he murmured, hurriedly taking his seat in between his brothers.

Hiroko and L moved to the opposite side of the table, having to move the chairs closer to accommodate the chain. Tadashi and Aika began taking bowls and plates in and out of the kitchen while Hiroko turned to L.

"I told them about your insane eating habits, so you don't have to worry about eating anything remotely healthy," she said sarcastically. "Will you please at least try to make a good impression? My parents are trying to find a reason that you're not a psychopath, and you're still sitting like an ape."

"I must sit like this, Hiroko-kun," L started, "it-"

"You don't need to repeat it again," Hiroko said, defeated. "I already know, forty percent."

By that time, Aika had given Hiroko and L their food. L had been given a bowlful of cherries, strawberries, and other things of that nature. Hiroko shook her head and looked to her mother instead.

"Mom, do you need any help with the boys?" she asked. Aika shook her head and smiled.

"No, Hiroko, we're fine," she said as she tried to get food in front of three screaming six-year-olds.

During dinner, the triplets were the only ones who really asked questions. Mainly, they were silly or gruesome for children.

"Did'ja ever kill someone?" Jiro asked eagerly, staring at the detective with eyes wide enough to rival L's.

"Jiro, that is not an appropriate question for the dinner table," Aika scolded.

"Why d'you sit like that?" was the next question, courtesy of Mamoru.

"It increases his reasoning ability by forty percent," Hiroko droned.

"I detect sarcasm in that response," L told her. Hiroko ignored him, stabbing at her food.

"So Ryuzaki," Aika began after a pause, "you're a detective?"

"Yes," L said simply. Hiroko glared at him, but it went unnoticed. And that went on for an hour. Hiroko felt like trying to stab L with her fork, but knew that would only increase her Kira percentage. Probably higher than it would were she to just complain. Luckily, Aika didn't try to make too many more attempts at instigating conversation. Tadashi just watched Hiroko, and every so often glowered at L.

After dinner, Aika took the boys upstairs to bed - but not before much begging to stay up later. When the four left, Hiroko and L were stuck in the living room with Tadashi. He didn't look very happy.

"Ryuzaki, just why are you chained to my daughter?" he asked gruffly. He were go, Hiroko thought grimly.

"Because Hiroko-chan is a suspect in the Kira investigation," L replied. "She must be under constant surveillance."

"But she isn't Kira!" Tadashi exclaimed. "She's a technology major in college; or, she used to be."

"Father, it really is no use trying to tell him this," Hiroko said, "I have already tried. Really, it's fine. I'll spend a few weeks or whatever chained to this guy, and then I'll be cleared and do something else."

"What is 'something else', exactly, Hiroko?" Tadashi demanded. "You dropped out of college, and for what?"

"Because I thought it wasn't for me," she explained for the hundredth time. "I didn't know what I was going to do, so I figured I'd try again later, which-"

"You're wasting your life!"

"Father, you are only bringing this up because you are angry that I'm being investigated," Hiroko told him. "Because it's becoming more known, and I'm being linked back to you. I'm sorry that it's happening, but I can't change it. It won't even matter once I'm cleared."

"If you're cleared," L interjected.

"Okay, you really aren't helping," Hiroko muttered to him.

"What does he mean 'if', Hiroko?" Tadashi demanded.

Hiroko sighed. "Father, he means that if they knew I was going to be cleared, then there would be no reason for the surveillance. I am a suspect, and that is that. I know I'm not guilty, and I know that eventually, that will be proven. For now, I'll suffer through whatever amount of time I have to spend chained to Ryuzaki."

"And do what?"

"If you even bothered to listen to me, I would have told you that I re-enrolled in college," Hiroko spat. "Classes start next week. But I suppose you didn't want to know this, or you would have let me say something. Now, if you'll excuse me Otou-san, we're probably needed back at Task Force. Please tell Mom and the boys I said goodbye."

Hiroko all but dragged L out the door at three times his normal pace.

"Hiroko-chan?" L asked. "How can you still be upset by the incident which occurred two hours ago?"

They were back at Task Force after leaving Hiroko's place earlier than expected. When Hiroko told her father that they were needed, she hadn't been expecting to actually be forced to work. But then again, she reasoned, this was the man who had let her spend a night working the imprint of a stapler into her face.

"Because I am," she growled, attempting to snag a loose screw out from the middle of a tangle of wires inside a laptop. She knew her answer was childish, but L was basically still ten, anyway. _He wants me to play by his rules, then fine. I'll do it._

Said man tilted his head, calculating eyes sharpening. "There is only a two-percent chance that you were lying to your father about returning to college."

"I wasn't lying; I was supposed to start next Tuesday."

" 'Supposed to', Hiroko-chan?" L asked, momentarily confused. Hiroko flicked her wrist, rattling the chain.

"I doubt they'll take too kindly to this," she commented.

"Light-kun's educational system did not seem to mind," L said. "As long as Yagami-san explained to them that it was a matter of public security of government issue, they allowed it." He paused for a moment, realizing he had overlooked something. "Hiroko-chan, why were you majoring in technology?"

"Because it pertained to my future career," Hiroko said evasively, still fiddling with the loose screw. _This isn't the only screw loose,_ she thought.

"Which was?" L prodded.

"Computer scientist," Hiroko said. "That's why I'm taking Computer Science and Microeconomics and all that." She was silent again, a second later victoriously holding up a miniature screw.

"You do remember that that screw came from the computer?" L said, wondering how the woman could possibly major in Computer Science. "Which means that you'll need to reinsert it instead of taking it out completely."

Hiroko looked blank for a moment before swearing and trying to get the screw back where it used to be.

"I'm not always this scattered," she muttered. "I never was until I got chained to you. Now I never sleep and I'm surrounded by insanity."

L made no remark, choosing to ignore the woman's complaints and beckon Watari.

"Watari, could you please get some ice cream?" L asked the man.

"I'll need to go to the store, I think. But yes, I'll be right back," he said. "Hiroko-chan? Want some ice cream?"

Hiroko hesitated, but shrugged anyway. "Sure, why not?" she said as she finally found where the screw had been. What she wanted was to watch TV and eat junk food, a sort of catharsis to being handcuffed to this weirdo. Watari bowed to them and left, and from the open window they heard a car starting.

"Are the stores even still open at midnight? And how can you still be able to eat? We just got back from my parents' not half an hour ago," Hiroko said to L.

"I could say the same to you," L shot back.

Hiroko considered it for a moment, then admitted, "True, true. Well, talking with my father always takes the energy out of me."

"Your father was very inquisitive," L said.

"He does that," Hiroko said. "He wouldn't allow me to date until I was eighteen, and even then all my boyfriends had to be approved by him. He was constantly afraid that I'd find some pervert, or something. And then, of course, this happens, proving him right."

"I'm...a pervert?" L asked curiously.

Hiroko sighed. "Never mind." She was glad when Watari came back with the ice cream, content to curl up against the arm of the couch, copying L's trick of eating ice cream with one hand and using the laptop with the other. Though, in her case, she was fixing the computer rather than actually doing research.

After about five minutes, Light came into the room and looked disdainfully at the two.

"This is a sickness," he said, looking at L, who had nearly emptied his tub of ice cream, and Hiroko, who wasn't too far behind. "Ryuzaki, you've successfully corrupted someone. Congratulations," he told him sarcastically.

"Hey, if you'd just had to deal with my father, you'd be shoveling ice cream, too," Hiroko defended herself. "I used to live off this kind of stuff in college."

"Ryuzaki lives off this stuff all the time," Light contributed.

"Why are you still awake, Light?" Hiroko asked. "I thought everybody would have gone to bed right now; it's twelve-forty in the morning."

Light shrugged. "I got so used to pulling all-nighters with Ryuzaki and waking up so early that it's hard to readjust. Couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd try to get some work done."

"Okay, now that's a sickness," Hiroko commented.

"Hiroko-kun, kindly refrain from speaking for three minutes," L said. Hiroko looked confused, but shrugged and looked to Light for clarification. He smiled and shook his head. Hiroko grumbled under her breath. After only a minute and a half, she broke the silence.

"Why am I supposed to be quiet?" she demanded.

"The pitch of your voice is grating on my hearing at this time," L said. Hiroko looked like she was going to strangle him, but instead closed her eyes and let her head drop on the arm of the couch again.

"I will be extremely angry is you make me sleep out here again," she muttered, her threat slightly muffled by the couch fabric.

"Duly noted," L said dryly, "and your Kira percentage has raised by one."

"Also duly noted," Hiroko murmured. Light shook his head and went to his station, and a duet of keyboard tapping resounded through the room. After half an hour, it was joined by a muttered curse word every so often as Hiroko resumed fixing a particularly troublesome laptop.

**A/N: Yay, second chapter of my random drabbles! Comment/review, fave, subcribe, whatever. :D  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: O_o Wow, another chapter so soon! Well, I've been on a roll with this, even though I should be working on Treason. *shrug* I'll keep working on that one, and meanwhile, here's this! Enjoy!**

_The Next Tuesday (Day of College Wonders)_

Sweltering heat was beating down on the students, the slightly zephyr the only thing that was keeping them from melting. Of course, L knew that melting from the sun's heat was highly improbable, but Hiroko's comments and complaints weren't too far off. The heat was the cause of his slight annoyance; the stares and whispers of Hiroko's classmates didn't faze him in the slightest. He was used to that from the year he had spent chained to Light at his own college.

What did surprise him, though, was that Hiroko had the oddest of friends. One, a rather tall, serious-looking man had looked at L like a science project. The detective wondered if that was how he seemed all the time.

"Hiroko-chan!" A girl pushed through the crowd of now-annoyed-looking college students to fling her arms around Hiroko's neck. Her long black hair was entangled with ribbons that draped everywhere. L watched Hiroko gently pry her off.

"Kaede-chan, it's good to see you," Hiroko said once the other girl was a safe step away from her.

"Hiroko-chan, what's all this?" Kaede asked, pointing to the chain and L. Hiroko waved her hand dismissively.

"The government hates me; now let's move on," she said.

"Well, okay. I've got to run to my Sociology class, but I'll see you later for lunch!"

"Goodbye Kaede-chan," Hiroko said as Kaede disappeared again. She pulled on the chain, trying to be discreet about it but still get her point across. "C'mon, I've got to get to Computer Tech," she said to L. He went along agreeably, if just to get out of the heat.

Upon entering her classroom, Hiroko bowed deeply to her professor, an aging man with extremely thick spectacles.

"Ibaraki-sensei," she said, "please excuse this." She held up the arm with the chain clamped over it. Her teacher stared.

"Please, pretend that I am not present," L said. Ibaraki looked L up and down, observing his usual behavior. The professor nodded once and Hiroko led L to a table in the middle of the room. She hooked a stool out from under the table and pushed it over to L, then proceeded to ignore him as she took out her slim silver laptop.

L spent his time observing the other students; it was the first time in quite a while that he had been in a room with people who were in possession of an IQ higher than eighty. Of course, there were some exceptions at the Task Force, like Light, but his brilliance was severely dragged down by those like Matsuda. Especially Matsuda. L was already familiar with the majority of the material covered in Hiroko's class, but it was refreshing to hear polysyllabic words used. And correctly, too.

During class, the students worked on some form of algorithm while Ibaraki asked a technical question every so often. Hiroko worked furiously, hands flying over the keys, and L began to think that maybe she could be used for something other than replacing screws and rewiring laptops. There was, after all, the case of her personal laptop they had confiscated from her home.

L had accessed most of the files, but while they had been password-protected, they contained nothing of worth. Just old classwork, some schedules, and photos of her and her friends. However, there was a section of the laptop that had much more than simple passwords. There were codes and algorithms and multitudes of encryption. L had broken through many of the firewalls, but he had hit a dead end. he had never encountered many of the codes before, leading him to think that they were Hiroko's personal project, her own design.

Of course, if it was something she didn't want seen, there was no way they could ask her to open it; she could simply refuse, or execute some command to delete everything.

Now, watching Hiroko, L could believe that she might have been capable of creating or using an advanced firewall like the one on her laptop. She was, L admitted very grudgingly, smart. Of course, nowhere near his level, or Light's, but she was clever in her own way.

By the end of class, Hiroko found a way to position the chain so it didn't make too much noise. However, the students still stared at her and L every so often, snickering at them. L noticed that every time they did that, Hiroko grew progressively angrier. Soon she was stabbing violently at the keyboard, glaring at the monitor. When class ended, she closed her programs, shoved her laptop into her bag, and left, staring straight ahead.

"You do not enjoy being talked about by your classmates," L stated.

"Wow, I can see how you're the greatest detective ever with incredible deductive skills like that," Hiroko snapped sarcastically. Which, of course, L ignored.

"It's only natural," he said, "to be protective of those who-"

"Whoa, wait a minute. No way is this about you," Hiroko said loudly. "It's me."

"Intriguing; I would not have thought you to be the type to care about that others think of you," L said.

"I don-" Hiroko cut herself off, half-starting a few words until realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Dammit. "You cornered me!" she accused. Though L stayed silent, Hiroko could see the satisfied look on his face as they found her Microeconomics class, which Hiroko sulked through. How dare L insinuate those things? He had basically trapped her between a rock and a hard place; either admit she cared about what people said about the guy she was chained to, or say that she cared about what they thought of her. Little bastard...

"Kudo?" her professor asked loudly, making Hiroko start and look up.

"Yes, Fukui-sensei?" she asked, trying to look like she had been paying attention the whole time. Fukui wasn't fooled.

"If you are going to attend class, I would request that you pay attention," he said. Hiroko ducked her head respectfully.

"Yes Fukui-sensei," she muttered. From her peripheral vision, she was the corner of L's mouth twitch - his version of a smirk. Hiroko glared, but trained her eyes on the board for the remainder of class.

At lunchtime, Hiroko seemed like she wanted to be anywhere but in the courtyard with Kaede. L sat two feet away, watching them idly while eating pure sugar cubes he had brought with him. Hiroko now had a great deal of respect for Light. If he could go a year without strangling the detective, so could she. At least, that was what she told herself.

"Okay, Hiroko-chan, I'm sorry, but I have to know: please tell me what's with him?" Kaede asked, gesturing again to L. He met her gaze steadily, still crouched in his usual position.

"Confidential," L said. Kaede blinked, as though she had not expected L to have to ability of speech.

"...Why?"

Hiroko, for once, was quite fond of her friend's slight denseness; now L had to put up with it. Now that she thought about it, Kaede was practically a female Matsuda, who was majoring in Sociology. It was creepy.

"Because it is government work," L was explaining calmly, much like Hiroko had on the train to her parents' place. "Are you a government employee?"

"No..." Kaede said slowly. L nodded.

"Then it is confidential." He stretched out the last word, as if he thought it was too big for Kaede to handle. The slightly hurt look on her friend's face spurred Hiroko to step in.

"Hey, Ryuzaki, shut it with the whole 'holier-than-thou' attitude," she said, placing a comforting hand on Kaede's shoulder. Her friend may be thick, but she still didn't like L insulting her.

"Hiroko-chan, I was merely copying the attitudes and tones of those I observed here," L said with far-too-false innocence. "You yourself were the one who told me to act normal."

"Ryuzaki, dammit, when people use sarcasm toward friends, it's kind sarcasm, not your malicious sarcasm," Hiroko told him.

"Fine then; I shall give up on attempting to meet your demands of normalcy." L then remained silent, choosing to stare even more intently. Hiroko could tell that Kaede was getting uncomfortable being stared at for so long, so she changed the subject hurriedly.

"So Kaede, how is Masaso?" she asked. Kaede's face lit up and a dreamy smile appeared on her lips as she launched into a full-on description of dates her boyfriend had taken her on. Hiroko took the time to stare off into space, adding 'hm's and 'oh yeah's when Kaede took a breath. She knew she probably looked uninterested, but compared to L, she was the most attentive person on the world. L looked utterly and completely bored; Hiroko wouldn't have been surprised if he fell asleep right there.

"Hey, are you all right, Hiroko-chan?" Kaede asked after fifteen minutes. "You look a little flushed."

Hiroko blinked; it did feel hot all of a sudden. She tugged at the collar of her shirt and brushed her hair behind her shoulders.

"Uh, yeah, I'm fine," she assured her friend. "Guess it's just a little too hot for my tastes."

"Well here, let's go back inside with the air conditioning; classes are going to start soon, anyhow."

Hiroko nodded and followed Kaede back inside the Dining Hall. Few students were there - preferring to eat outside in the sun - and the air conditioning of the Hall did feel nice. Hiroko shook her head and hoisted her bag more securely around her shoulders.

As the day dragged on, Hiroko grew to despise L even more. He attracted the stares and whispers of nearly everybody, and several idiot jocks made perverted comments that caused Hiroko to want to punch then in the jugular.

"Yes yes, quite witty," she said after a group of football players made a monosyllabic bondage joke. "How original. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

She brushed past the jocks easily, but fumed for a while longer. One day back at college and she was already the main center of attention, for bondage and kinks with a creepy pervert.

"You have quite a temper," L commented, "especially for something so trivial. As I said before -"

"No, you're not going to corner me again, you brat! My head's killing me and I refuse to deal with you until we can get back to Task Force and I can get some painkillers."

All throughout Hiroko's final class, she rubbed her temples and didn't pay much attention at all. Luckily, her teacher didn't pick up on this; the woman droned on and on about SQL programming, her wispy gray hair blowing idly from the bun sitting precariously on top of her head like a little bird. When the bell rang, L was the one dragging Hiroko out, she was walking so slowly.

"Watari," he said into his cell phone. Hiroko couldn't muster the emotion to care right then as a few girls, majoring in Art and Style courses, pointed and giggled at the way L held the phone.

"Watari will meet us at the front gate in five minutes," L said, pulling Hiroko along.

"God, I feel like crap," she muttered. Immediately, she collapsed on a wooden bench by the cast-iron gate, holding her head in her hand. L had no sympathy for the woman, and bit thoughtfully at a sugar cube he dug out of his pocket - along with a bent paper clip, some fuzzy crap, and an old butterscotch candy that Hiroko didn't want to know the age of. Once L saw the sleek black car pull up, he yanked on the chain.

"Hiroko-chan, Watari has arrived," he said. Hiroko groaned, but heaved herself up and allowed L to drag her to the car.

"Is she all right?" Watari asked as Hiroko sat with her head resting on her knees.

"Headache," she told him. "Huge, huge headache."

"We've got aspirin back at Task Force," Watari said.

"Not soon enough," Hiroko complained.

At three the next morning, L was roughly yanked out of bed by Hiroko, who sprinted to the bathroom and proceeded to have her head in the toilet for the next three minutes. L sat perched on the bathroom counter, calmly calling Watari and apologizing for waking him. Hiroko rested her head on the toilet, complaining, but in a quieter manner than before.

Once Watari arrived, he was able to diagnose a 24-hour-bug, and gave Hiroko some weird and horrid-tasting purple pills for her fever.

"This was most likely the cause of that headache you had yesterday," he told her.

"Wonderful; glad we got that cleared up," Hiroko said. She felt slightly bad about snapping at Watari; she actually rather liked the old man. But she mainly felt pain, had a bad taste in her mouth, and extremely tired.

L wasn't much help at all. Unfazed by being restricted to the bathroom, he simply had Watari bring him his laptop. Somehow, Hiroko wasn't surprised in the slightest that while she had her head stuck down the toilet, L was working.

The weird pills Watari gave her didn't work too well, and he kept making her sip water. It only made her vomit more, but apparently if she got dehydrated, they'd have to take her to the ER. And Watari told her she couldn't eat, but she really didn't want to.

She wasn't quite aware of how long it had been since they had relocated to the bathroom, but it felt like forever. However, she was afraid to ask L (or Watari, really, because she doubted L knew she was still there) for fear it had only been one hour. She was so tired, she was moderately certain that she fell asleep with her head resting on the toilet. Well, she thought without humor, it was an interesting change from the stapler. Better, maybe not.

"Okay Ryuzaki, tell me," Hiroko said after a while. "I know you had an idea before all this; I know that look. What was it?"

L pressed a few buttons on his laptop. "Nothing," he said.

"C'mon, I'm sick; humor me," Hiroko said.

"L does not humor anyone," L said.

"L should learn how to," Hiroko said, "and also, L should not refer to himself in the third person."

After a few more exchanges of bickering - bored on L's part, tired on Hiroko's - Watari made them stop, saying that Hiroko shouldn't work herself up. She noticed how Watari said 'work herself up' and not 'let L work her up'. It was interesting, watching L and Watari's relationship, Hiroko discovered. Watari's attitude toward L was quite paternal, though Hiroko knew he wasn't L's actual father. And L obeyed Watari more than Hiroko had ever seen him obey anyone, even Soichiro. Watari was the only one L really had, Hiroko realized in the fuzzy confines of her mind. And even though she sometimes hated the weird little annoyance, she held a reluctant respect for the detective. Though she'd never tell him; it'd be one more thing he could hold over her head.

Another thing she found odd about Watari was that not only did he seem fatherly to L, but he also seemed sympathetic toward Hiroko, who he'd met once or twice, and not for very long. Maybe it was just that he seemed like that compared to L, who hadn't said a word since their little mini-argument, but the older man reminded Hiroko of Tadashi, her own father, when she'd been sick as a little girl.

She remembered Tadashi had sat by her side all night long, and had even called in to work to stay with her when she'd had Scarlet Fever. Of course, then, she'd just had a bad rash and a bright pink tongue, but Tadashi had sat dutifully by her side, soothing her and reading books to her. She remembered falling asleep to his voice reciting fairy tales over and over again. Hiroko wondered if Jiro, Mamoru, and Botan received the same treatment she had once had when they were sick.

Now, instead of Tadashi, she had L and Watari. Not exactly the same, in fact there was quite a difference, but it was still something. Sort of. It was a tad weird, because Watari wasn't related to her, but he was simply easy to be around. Hiroko wondered how on Earth someone like Watari could get along easily with someone like L. She then decided to leave that for another time when her head wasn't distracted by pain and the still-horrible taste in her mouth.

At some point, someone must have called the University to tell them Hiroko wouldn't be coming in for the day; probably Watari, since L didn't seem to be able to look up from his computer. Also at an unidentifiable time, Hiroko's profuse vomiting slowed in frequency. Watari still forced her to drink water, which she was able to keep down, much to her relief.

"How long's it been?" she finally asked, deciding it was all right to ask, now that the disease seemed to have run its course.

"It's one in the morning, Hiroko-chan," Watari told her. "Of the next day," he clarified upon Hiroko's confused look. She nodded and went back to just being slumped against the wall, watching the ceiling. She was utterly exhausted; not only had she been surviving on L's sleeping habits (aka, none) but she had just been awake and sick for nearly an entire day straight. Slowly, her personality turned back to her normal, grouchy-when-tired self, and she even poked an argument with L for something to do.

Hiroko convinced Watari that he could leave, that she was feeling much better and that she was thankful to him for helping her. Watari eventually went back to his room, bidding L and Hiroko a good night.

After Hiroko took a shower, she felt so much better simply by being clean. Not bothering to dry her hair, she pulled it up into a lazy ponytail, threw on shorts and a tank top, and went to sleep until, according to L, five in the afternoon.

Technically, she slept until L woke her up again. She glared at him and demanded to know why he couldn't just let her sleep; after all, she'd just been awake for over twenty-four hours. L told her it was because she was better, and they had work to be done.

"Oh, by the way Ryuzaki," Hiroko said as they walked down the halls of the Task Force building. "I know you had an idea back then, and I'm not letting it go this time. I'm damn curious now." She knew letting that bit of information slip was a bad move; now that L knew she was curious, he could easily use that as blackmail. However, surprisingly, he did not.

"Of course I had an idea as to what it may have been," L said.

"...And?" Hiroko prodded.

"Well, it was in the morning," L began, "you've seemed quite tired stressed lately, and your temper seems to have gotten worse. And, while on that first day you dragged me to that store to purchase ... feminine products," - Hiroko drew a bit of pride in L's split-second hesitation - "you went far more than eight hours before using the facilities."

Hiroko's pride vanished. "Wait...you thought...?" She was unable to complete her sentence.

"Pregnancy," L said just as they entered the Task Force main room. Of course, everyone turned to look at them as Hiroko's eyes widened.

"You thought I was pregnant?" Hiroko shrieked.

"Hormonal," L muttered. "And it could have easily been morning sickness."

"You evil little gargoyle! You planned this, again!"

While Hiroko screamed at L, everyone in the Task Force looked at them with a wide range of expressions. Matsuda looked clueless, as usual; Soichiro looked disapproving; Light was laughing; and even Watari, standing at the back of the room, had a small smile on his lips.

"How could I have planned your illness, Hiroko-chan?" L asked innocently. "It was obviously not my doing."

"Not that; you planned to say this just as we walked in here! I cannot believe you thought I was pregnant!" Hiroko exclaimed.

"It was not an illogical assumption; it has only been a little past a week since you have been under constant surveillance. Incubation period is -"

Having heard far more than enough, Hiroko punched L dead-on in the face. Taking a calming breath, she wondered how he was able to stay upright and not even have the smallest mark on his pale face. This did not, of course, damage her satisfaction; she had wanted to do that for quite some time.

"Do you want to add points to my Kira percentage, or shall I?"

**A/N: God, why am I so evil? **

**Anyhow, that's chapter three for ya, hope you enjoyed! Thanks to Ruin Takada, who corrected me in my botched Japanese, which I got off the Internet. Thanks!**

**Review, flame, subscribe, worship, sacrifice to Joshin, whatever. :D  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Sorry this took so long, I can only control the Death Note cast for so long, apparently. Exceeding that allotted time, L gets childish and bored and starts throwing cherries at me. And Light complains about his khakis being wrinkled, which is annoying as all hell. Anyhow, I made this one extra long in compensation!**

Hiroko, after punching out L, was still fixing laptops. One would think that after she'd just been ill, she could maybe have gotten the afternoon off or something, but no, L was insistent. It probably didn't help that she'd hit him, either. Watari had insisted on making sure Hiroko hadn't broken L's face, and deemed that he would be fine. Hiroko deemed that L just had a thick head.

"Hiroko-chan," L called.

"Mm?" Hiroko asked, not taking her eyes off the laptop. She wasn't going to waste the energy on whatever ridiculous question or comment about her attitude, followed by a rise in her Kira percentage, L was probably about to spout.

"What do you make of this?" L asked, sliding a piece of paper across the desk to her. It hit the edge of the computer and bumped the other way, but Hiroko caught it before it hit the ground. L had written a sequence of numbers on it in the same style of font he used for his alias. Hiroko studied the numbers for a moment before shaking her head.

"It's some sort of encryption, though I don't know what kind, or how to break it," she admitted. "It's nothing I've ever seen before. Why? Where'd you find this?"

L was silent, watching Hiroko intently. She didn't seem to be lying, but she had to be; that was the encryption from her computer. Of course she knew it. But she looked genuinely curious, and slightly annoyed that he had interrupted her work.

"You have a new assignment, Hiroko-chan," L announced, but was interrupted before he could get much farther.

"Thank God!" Hiroko said. "I was starting to think I'd be fixing these insipid laptops forever."

L gave her a withering stare. "If you're quite done, shall I explain your assignment, or leave you be?"

It was Hiroko's turn to glare. "Fine, go ahead."

"You are going to find out exactly what that is," L nodded to the paper, "and how to access whatever it protects."

Hiroko gave a mock salute. "All right, then. I'll get right on that."

L dug out another laptop from the desk drawer and passed it to Hiroko. Immediately, she opened it and began her research. She'd forgotten how immersed in her work she could get, when given the time. The last time she'd needed to do anything serious for a while was back in college. Now she'd re-enrolled, however, she would bet that this was going to be another constant.

After some time, Light walked over. "Where were you yesterday, Hiroko?" he asked. "We didn't see you. Or you, Ryuzaki, either," he added.

"The gargoyle worked his Evil Power over the Universe and Time to somehow infect me with a 24-hour-bug," Hiroko claimed. L looked over at her in condescending confusion.

"Really, Hiroko-kun? That is how you explain illness?" he asked.

"For Christ's sake, Ryuzaki, it was sarcasm," she exclaimed. "I don't seriously think you could control time or anything like that. If you did, we'd all be screwed."

"How lovely," L said, and disappeared back into the realm of his laptop. Hiroko snorted and turned back to her own.

"He's finally got you doing real work?" Light asked. Hiroko handed the paper over to him absently.

"You have any idea what this is?" she asked. "Because so far, I've got nothing."

"Is this an encryption?" Light asked, studying the numbers.

Hiroko nodded, muttering an 'uh-huh...' "I figured that much out, but nothing else."

Light shrugged and handed the paper back. "Sorry; not my area of expertise."

"Of course it isn't, Light-kun," L said. "If it were, I would have assigned this to you. Since it is Hiroko-chan's major, however…"

Hiroko sighed. "Ryuzaki, this isn't showing up anywhere, and I've looked in all the likely places."

"Then look in the _un_likely places," L said.

"Wow, I didn't think of that one," Hiroko said, and resumed her work, staring at the code every so often, like the explanation would jump off the page at her if she looked hard enough.

"It seems so familiar," Hiroko said after searching numerous unlikely databases and coming up with nothing. "It feels like I've seen it before, or heard about it. But I don't get it."

"What don't you get, Hiroko-chan?" L asked from his station.

"It's clearly an encryption," Hiroko explained, "protecting something. But I can't do much with just its code; I'll need to see the actual thing. The computer you got this from. I don't suppose you'd happen to have the device you found this on with you?"

"Impossible at this time," L said.

"Of course; wouldn't want me to actually accomplish anything," Hiroko muttered.

"If you are able to track the device that harbored this encryption, you may do with it what you wish." Hiroko stared in disbelief.

"Ryuzaki, that could take days, weeks even!" she said.

"Then you should start," L said. Hiroko hung her head for a moment before obeying.

"It'll take forever, so don't bitch me out when I don't have the answer by the end of the day," she warned. After a while, she started noticing that there was a different air about the room. It was…less disappointed? Was there a raise in the average IQ? That couldn't be right…

"Where's Matsuda?" Hiroko asked, finally realizing that said man wasn't present.

"Soichiro-san sent him on a simple mission to collect data," L said.

"Matsuda?" she asked dubiously; she hadn't known the man long, but it didn't take a genius to see that he was rather dim. "When's he getting back?"

"He just got back now," Light called. Hiroko followed his gaze and immediately saw why everyone was gaping in open-mouthed horror. Matsuda was standing at the front of the room, victoriously holding a stack of files in his hand. What was disturbing, though, was the fact that he was wearing a fedora, a trench coat, and huge sunglasses. Nobody in the room spoke for at least three minutes. Finally, Hiroko found her voice.

"…You look like a rapist," she exclaimed. "Where could you possibly go where dressing like that would seem appropriate?"

"It's not that bad," Matsuda said, looking crestfallen. "Soichiro-san told me to be inconspicuous, so I dressed like those detectives in old movies. They never get caught…"

"Soichiro-san," – Hiroko swiveled her chair toward the man – "where did you send Matsuda-san?"

"…To an children's adoption agency," Soichiro said. He didn't even look horrified, like a third of the Task Force did; no, Soichiro simply looked dismayed. Hiroko guessed he was used to it by now.

Hiroko put her face in her hands. "Oh God," she murmured. "Honestly Matsuda-san, what were you thinking? You look like a rapist! Or a pedophile!"

"It's a wonder they didn't call the cops on him," Aizawa muttered. To Hiroko, it was a wonder Aizawa could walk normally without being overbalanced by that afro, but she assumed that was a matter best saved for later.

"Well, I got the info," Matsuda said, cheerful voice deflated into a dejected one. Soichiro took the files the idiot offered him.

"Thank you, Matsuda," he said. "I suppose you didn't screw up at least one thing."

"Thanks, Chief!" Matsuda said, the bright smile instantly reappearing as he pretty much skipped back to his seat. Hiroko shook her head in disbelief.

"How can anyone be that utterly clueless?" she asked. The millisecond after she said that, she braced herself for a sarcastic answer from L, which insinuated something about her own intelligence, too. However, it never came. Unable to believe the detective would have passed up an opening to jab at her, Hiroko swiveled her chair towards him. Her mouth - which she had just been able to close after Matsuda's little stunt - opened a bit and she wondered whether to be shocked or amused by the fact that L was stabbing at the keyboard hurriedly while a small window on his computer monitor featured two girls getting it on. Unfortunately for him, he must have hit the mute button, and erotic female moans could be heard for a second before he slammed it again, and it quieted.

"..." Most of the Task Force was silent, half of them still pondering Matsuda's IQ level, and the other half staring at L as he attempted to close the window. Hiroko could see that the mousepad was stuck.

"Okay, so Matsuda just walked into an adoption agency in a pedo-outfit, and now you're watching lesbian porn?" she asked incredulously. "Did nobody tell me that this agency is really just a mental outpatient center for sex addicts?"

"It's a pop-up," L muttered, trying to close the window, but it was still not working. He reminded himself to ask Watari to get a better laptop as soon as possible.

"It's porn," Hiroko insisted.

"Once again, I will explain that it is a pop-up, not something that I myself conjured," L explained.

"Porn."

"Pop-up."

"Porn."

"Pop-up."

"Porn."

"Pop-up."

The two carried on their two-worded conversation until Soichiro finally yelled at them to shut up, leaving Hiroko staring at yet another broken laptop, and L unwillingly watching porn. Though Hiroko doubted it was too unwilling. Eventually, L gave up and pushed the laptop to the side, instead choosing to scribble down random percentages and equations on a scrap of paper.

"It's just frozen, Ryuzaki," Hiroko said. "Probably from your inability to give it a break, so it got overheated. It'll stop in a minute. Though what the hell site were you on that it gave you that pop-up?"

"So Hiroko-chan is admitting that it is a pop-up!" L claimed.

"Yes, yes, whatever," she muttered. The detective gave a brief self-satisfied smile before turning back to his computer. Just when Hiroko was about to strangle him...the lights went off. And not just the big overhead lights, the ones with the sickly yellow-tinted glow that made everything look kind of like watery mustard. No, even the desk lamps and laptops shut off. The Task Force started muttering to each other, but Soichiro's booming voice quieted them instantly.

"Mandatory lockdown drill," he announced. The Task Force grumbled again, this time out of irritation. They knew the drill; lockdowns could last for hours, and nothing that needed to be plugged in worked. Some people took out books or magazines and struggled to read by the light of their cell phones, Light leaned back in his chair, and Hiroko realized that Matsuda had left. That couldn't be good.

"Ryuzaki? Did Matsuda leave again?" she asked. L looked around and shook his head.

Hiroko started when Matsuda, free of rapist-wear this time, banged through the doors again. He was holding his hands behind his back and beaming like a child on Christmas Day. It was kind of creepy.

"Hey guys, guess what I got!" he called. Only a few people looked up to indulge Matsuda.

"Matsuda, how did you manage to get back in here?" Soichiro asked. "We're in lockdown."

"Yeah, I know, but I kinda got lost on my way back up here, and the security guards let me through, like they did last time," the man explained. "But guess what I found!"

"What now, Matsuda?" Light sighed.

Matsuda brought his cupped hands out in front of him to reveal a black-and-white kitten. She was curled up in sleep, stumpy tail tucked against its body as much as it could, and her ear twitched every so often.

"I call her Nori!" Matsuda informed him, still beaming. Light blinked as Matsuda dumped the cat on his lap. Nori stretched and woke up, tiredly blinking wide green eyes up at Light.

"Matsuda?" Light asked slowly. "What am I supposed to do with a cat?"

"Say hi to her!" Matsuda said.

"Are you high?"

"Light, just take the cat," Soichiro said. "We can't kill the thing by letting Matsuda take care of it."

Reluctantly, Light picked up the cat, walked over to Hiroko, and put it in her lap instead. "Here," he said. "I've got to work."

"Like I don't?" Hiroko replied, scratching the cat behind the ears. It started purring and kneading on her leg. Hiroko flinched and slipped her other hand underneath the claws.

"She's not de-clawed," she announced to anyone who cared; i.e., nobody. The woman looked around for someone she could give Nori to. Everyone was either working, or simply incapable of taking care of another living being. She considered Aizawa, but worried that Nori would get lost in the afro. _Damn that afro is freakin' huge... _Hiroko forced herself to look away from what should have been another Wonder of the World and looked back down at Nori.

She was wide awake now, curious eyes looking up at Hiroko beseechingly. But I've never taken care of a cat, she thought. Hesitantly, she held out a hand for Nori to sniff. The cat, upon finding that Hiroko had no food, mewled pitifully. Hiroko jerked her hand back, afraid that she had somehow hurt it. Glancing back up, she saw that L was watching her. She considered dumping the cat with him, but quickly decided against it; there was no way L would remember to feed it, and with the way he held things, the poor cat would be dead in hours.

"What do you want?" she asked. L just stared. Hiroko shifted uncomfortably in her seat before yelping a bit when Nori started kneading on her leg; she had let her mind wander and moved her hand.

_She seems truly worried about hurting the cat,_ L thought, _which would lower her Kira percentage; Kira does not care for the health of living things. However, she could simply be faking to make me think about lowering her percentage, while she really is Kira..._

Hiroko was getting ready to punch L again if he didn't stop staring at her soon.

"By the way," L said, "my successors are coming to visit." Hiroko heard a groan from a few computers over.

"Ryuzaki, please tell them to stay away," Light said. "The last time they visited, the creepy short one managed to set me on fire. And the entire time, the one with the goggles and the one with the leather pants stood there and laughed."

"Near is not that short," L said, "it only seems that way since he rarely stands up. And he didn't mean to set you on fire; he was aiming for Mello."

"Whoa, who's Near? And who's Mello?" Hiroko asked. "You're confusing me."

L sighed as though Hiroko had said something incredibly dense. "Near, Matt, and Mello are my successors," he explained slowly. "They will be arriving three days from now, on Saturday."

"Yeah, I get what day is three days from now, thanks," Hiroko said. "Light, you've met them?"

"Unfortunately yes," Light said. "Matt's pretty cool, I guess. Mello's a tad insane, and Near just kind of scares me. He scares everyone, really. And they're all crazy."

"How does Near scare you?"

"Imagine a fifteen-year-old albino L. Who eats his toys."

"...He eats toys?" Hiroko asked, stroking the demanding Nori in her lap. The cat was wriggling up to her, getting her claws stuck in Hiroko's shirt. The woman struggled to remove them without hurting Nori as she listened to Light.

"Yep. They've all got weird little tics. Mello only ever seems to eat chocolate, and it's rare that Matt ever removes his face from his video games."

"Really, Light-kun, you speak of them as if they were mental patients instead of my successors," L said. Light shot him an 'are-you-joking?' look.

"Ryuzaki, if anything, half the people in here belong in a mental institution," he said. "Including those three. _Especially_ those three."

Hiroko laughed a bit, shaking poor Nori, who clawed her way up Hiroko's shirt to just sort of cling to her shoulder. "Ow..." Hiroko muttered. "When is the lockdown over? And what am I supposed to do about the cat?"

"I don't know when the lockdown will be over; the timing is random," L said. "And as for the cat, just feed it or something."

"Gee, that's a swell idea, Ryuzaki," Hiroko said. "If only I'd thought of that earlier. Oh wait, I did. And ya know why I didn't act on that? Because there's no freakin' cat food around here."

L, once again, ignored her. Hiroko went back to taking care of Nori, who was beginning to whine. Gently, Hiroko lifted the kitten up, making sure to support her hind legs and rest her against her shoulder. It was similar to holding her brothers when they were babies, she discovered, only Nori didn't puke on her.

"Ryuzaki," she said after a while, "you said that you people had already been watching me for a while? Having me followed, and all?"

The detective nodded, not looking up from the scrap of paper he was working on.

"How do I know that's true? It'd make sense that you'd say that you'd been watching me when you weren't, so I would say something to give myself away, thinking that you already knew it. And no," she added quickly, "this isn't me saying I'm Kira, because I'm not. Two percent."

"Would Hiroko-chan like me to prove that I was watching her before we brought her in?" L asked. Hiroko nodded. "You are nineteen years old, living by yourself, unmarried, no children. You quit college three months ago, yet re-enrolled."

"Okay, you could've found that stuff off the internet," Hiroko argued, stopping Nori from batting at her hair; the kitten had nearly pierced her ear, and she could still remember her mother telling her that if she wanted another hole in her ear, she could live with holes in her roof.

"You drive a silver Ford Tacoma and live in an apartment that is on the fourth floor of the building. Each Saturday, you walk to the local shop for groceries. In the past month, you placed calls to your idiot friend Kaede-chan, your parents, and your college. If you are still curious, I could tell you how you rarely talk in your sleep, you usually sleep on your left side, waking up at seven o'clock regularly-"

Hiroko stopped him, shaking her head. "Okay, okay, I get it. You're not lying." She wished she hadn't asked and was saved from the disturbed feeling when her phone rang.

_I really need to remember to check caller ID, _she thought,_ I'd rather not talk to Kaede-chan at the moment...maybe I'll assign her number a different ring tone, at least._

"Kaede-chan, now isn't the best time," Hiroko said.

"Okay, I'll be quick then," Kaede said. "Me and the girls thought, as a welcome back to college thing, we'd throw a little get-together. It's at my house this Friday, you there?"

"...No. No way," Hiroko said. "Kaede-chan, you know it's not possible-"

"Too late, Hiroko-chan! We're already stocking up!" Kaede trilled. Hiroko flinched; she legitimately felt like she was in psychological pain, like a mini-anvil was pressing against her brain, inside her skull.

"Well then cancel it! You know I can't do that, he'll never let me in the first place."

Kaede chuckled slyly. "Man, Hiroko, he's got you whipped, doesn't he?"

Hiroko's eyes widened and she lowered her voice. "He does not have me 'whipped,'" she hissed. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw L's eyebrow raise. _Great, he heard anyway._

"Hiroko, he totally does," Kaede assured her. "You always used to be up for stuff, now you're all, 'No, I can't because the creepy pervert says I've got to stay locked up somewhere,' and all that. The old Hiroko never would've done something just because someone else told her to; especially not because a guy told her to. Face it, girl: you've been whipped."

"Oh really? Fine then, I'm coming. Yeah, sure, I'm there. When?"

"Great! It's starting at eight o'clock at my house, this Friday!" Kaede chirped.

"Awesome; I'll be there," Hiroko promised. "You'll see."

Only when Hiroko hung up the phone did she realize Kaede had led her into agreeing to that. She blinked twice, then groaned and dropped her head into her arms. _Wonderful,_ she thought. _Damn, there's a reason she's a sociology major; I can't believe I forgot what a great manipulator the girl is. ...But what was all that about my being whipped? There's no way..._

"What's the latest?" Light asked, having observed Hiroko's call. "And what were you saying about someone having you whipped?"

"That was Kaede-chan, my friend from college," Hiroko explained grimly. "As a welcome-back celebration, they're throwing some kind of party or whatever at Kaede-chan's place. I always hated those; all she did was invite three or four girls and they'd all haul over truckloads of crap. Beer and such. By the end, everyone was slobbering drunk and either passed out or vomiting profusely."

"When would this be?" L asked.

"This Friday at eight." Hiroko automatically relayed Kaede's message. "Wait, you're not actually considering going with me to that, are you? There will be drunk girls playing horrible games...and that's your perverted point, isn't it?"

"No, it is not, Hiroko-chan," L said. Hiroko didn't believe him for a second; she knew he was a pervert, and Light seemed to, too. "We are going because you don't want to."

Hiroko stared and opened her mouth to say something, but forced herself to shut it again before she got the chance to say anything. Hiroko, cool it, she reminded herself. A reaction is exactly what he wants. She took a moment to make sure she wouldn't start complaining the second she opened her mouth and tried again.

"Fine," she said. It sounded like someone was stepping on her throat, though it could have just been Nori. "We'll go."

**A/N: There ya go! So in later chapters we'll get to see Near, Matt, and Mello, who should be fun to write, and a college party. And holy Lord, this chapter actually contained PLOT. Or, at least, a semblance of one. An introduction, if you will. Okay, it hinted a plot then went to crack.**

**In case you haven't noticed, I enjoy making fun of Matsuda. And Aizawa's afro. That thing should have its own name, in my opinion. It should have fucking MAGICAL POWERS. ...Lord, I think you'll be seeing a side-fic from me soon (that I wrote at 2 AM) about the adventures of Aizawa's magical afro...**

**UPDATE: ...Yeah, I did it. I wrote the one-shot. Aizawa's afro is now the main star of my random-ass oneshot. XD Well, you can read it if you want. ^^  
**

**In any case, review, feed to Mother Russia, flame, or murder someone you hate and dance around in their blood under the full moon (my friend Red and I threatened someone with this back in freshman year. Poor Petey...)**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Sorry this took so long; I'm still having some personal issues and all, so chapter six may be a little late. Sorry!  
On that note, I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading this for sticking with it for five amazingly fun chapters! Sorry that only one of them actually hinted at plot; crack is just so fun to write. But I'll get some plot-y goodness in here somewhere. Just not this chapter. The next one doesn't look so likely, either. Meh, enjoy!**

"Okay, if I said that going to my parents' house was a bad idea, this is a million times worse," Hiroko claimed. L was practically dragging her down the street; he seemed more eager to put Hiroko in an uncomfortable position. "The girls are seriously idiots, and when they're drunk, they do weird things. You do not want to be anywhere within a ten mile radius when they're drunk."

"And neither do you," L stated simply. Hiroko groaned as she opened the door to Kaede's house. Inside, normal light-bulbs had been replaced with strange pink- and red-tinted ones. Streamers hung over every fixture in the top half of the room, and weird little glitter shrapnel lay on every flat surface. Already, loud music was booming. Hiroko wanted to find the nearest alcohol already.

Normally, she hated drinking. It was gross and left you with a wicked hangover, and all in all was pointless. It didn't even taste good. But on these occasions, she made an exception. The girls got so utterly drunk that the only way Hiroko could stand them was to get drunk herself.

"Hiroko-chan!" Kaede, Aki, Emiko, and Mizuki came running out of the kitchen as Hiroko and L stepped in; Hiroko kicked the door shut with her foot. "Welcome back to college, girl!" Aki exulted.

"Uh, thanks, Aki-chan," Hiroko said, smiling slightly.

"See, Hiroko-chan," Kaede said happily. "You ain't whipped. Yet."

"Okay, who needs beer?" Hiroko asked, not needing L to get any ideas he could use against her.

The night was nearly as horrible as Hiroko knew it would be. Almost instantly, the four girls got slobbering drunk and started playing Truth Or Dare, which was (in Hiroko's opinion) completely degrading and worthless; a person could always lie, anyway.

"Hiroko-chan!" Mizuki exclaimed. " 's your turn. Truth 'r dare?"

"Truth," Hiroko monotoned, deciding that she was going to need to get drunk soon.

Mizuki drew a card from the precarious pile. "Have you ever kissed anyone?"

"Yes," Hiroko said. It was the truth, but none that she wanted to relive at all; her first kiss had ended badly. Mainly because her boyfriend had been a cheating bastard, his other girlfriend had arrived, and Hiroko ended up breaking his nose. This entire Truth Or Dare experience was made worse by the fact that L was sitting directly next to her, watching her answers. He, of course, hadn't drank anything; Hiroko hadn't expected him to, either. Beer wasn't sugary.

After a few turns, inevitably, it was Hiroko's turn again. "Truth," she said again. There was no way she was doing dare, not with L right there. He most likely had a video camera trained on her, ready and willing to use whatever she did as blackmail. Or 'evidence' that she was Kira. Either way was bad and annoying.

"When was the last time you had sex?" Mizuki announced. L blinked. Hiroko gaped; the hell kind of truth or dare questions were these? _Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit..._

"...Never," Hiroko said. Just like she knew they would, her drunken companions looked astounded.

"Seriously, Hiroko-chan?" Emiko asked, slurring horribly. "Ya never had sex b'fore?"

"No," she said, glaring.

"Why?" Kaede asked curiously.

"Never wanted to," Hiroko said. How could her friends not see that this was an extremely awkward and sensitive topic? Especially when there was a male in the room. Oh right, they were dead drunk, that was why.

"Not even with Kyo?" Emiko questioned. "You guys were together for, what, a few months?"

"No, not with Kyo, not with anyone!" Hiroko exclaimed, deciding that she most definitely needed a beer now.

"Who was that first boyfriend of yours, Hiroko?" Mizuki asked, swaying slightly. "Osamu, was it?"

"Oh my God, Hiroko, you went out with Osamu?" Aki squealed. "He was, like, the biggest dork in junior high, I remember."

"He was kind of a slut, that one," Kaede piped in. "He went out with nearly every girl by the end of the eleventh grade. Slept with quite a few of 'em, too. But not you, I guess, Hiroko, Little Miss Virgin?"

Hiroko was sure that, were she to look up from the carpet, L would be positively smirking my this point. She'd never live this down; especially not the Little Miss Virgin part. Definitely not that part. Her drunken acquaintances all laughed at that one, and Emiko high-fived Kaede.

"But seriously, 'roko-chan, ya gotta get out more," Emiko said in a failed attempt to be sober. "Ya gotta live a little, m'kay?"

"I live just fine," Hiroko said, happy to be straying off the topic of her sex life. Or lack there of, technically. It wasn't that she was ashamed of never doing it; she just didn't want to discuss her lack of doing it in front of L. It was weird, creepy, and amazing blackmail. There was no way Hiroko was going to let L get easy blackmail before she got some on him - which was slowly turning out to be nearly impossible.

"Hiroko-chan, you don't live fine," Emiko claimed. "Other wise ya wouldn't be chained to that guy...sorry, who're you again, Mr. Creepy Person?" Hiroko stifled a laugh with beer. Oh yeah, that was going to be a massive hangover in the morning. Usually, she wasn't so impulsive, but it had been a stressful week.

"Call me Ryuzaki," L said shortly, obviously wishing to be in the background instead of being called creepy by a drunken college student.

"M'kay, Ryuzaki it is," Emiko said, slurring the name into something truly unrecognizable.

" 'll right," Hiroko said. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that she herself was slurring, and most definitely drunk. That part of her was banking on the fact that L had a shred of common decency and wouldn't hold this over her head for the rest of her life. She seriously doubted it.

" 'll right," she started again, trying not to slur by over-enunciating her words, but it only made them come out twisted and weird. "You gonna keep drawin' those cards, m'lady Mizuki?"

"Yeah, you bet, Hiroko-chan!" Mizuki said happily, tossing the dice that she had scribbled their names on. Of course, since it was a six-sided dice, one side was blank. Mizuki claimed that if it landed on that, she could choose who had to choose truth or dare.

"It's the blank one!" she exclaimed. "Okay, I've gotta choose you, 'roko-chan, 'cause your answers 're the best. So truth 'r dare?"

"Truth," Hiroko slurred. The only thing keeping her from saying dare was probably that she had said truth so many times before, her intoxicated mind no longer remembered how to say dare anymore.

"With who was your first kiss, and did ya like it?" Mizuki asked. Hiroko blanched.

"M'kay, lemme see, it was with Hotaka, ya remember, that kind of biker-looking guy?" she asked. "Mizuki, I think you had him in your Bio class in freshman year of high school."

"Seriously? Him?" Mizuki asked incredulously. "Lord, 'roko-chan, you date the weirdest of guys."

"Lemme finish," Hiroko drunkenly snapped. "Well yeah, it was with him, and no, I didn't like it at all."

"Why not?" Aki asked, taking another long drink of beer.

"He was a lying, cheating bastard," Hiroko said, half-frowning. "He was cheatin' on me with that bitch, Chihiro. So Hotaka takes me out to dinner, some weird place with creepy-tasting food, an' he corners me outside my apartment buildin' an' kisses me, tries to feel me up an' whatnot. Anyways, so Chihiro walked by the buildin' and saw us. She tried to kill me, and ran off cryin'. I was angry an' hurt, so I hit Hotaka in the face."

"God, that was the week he wore that bandage around his nose!" Aki exclaimed. Hiroko nodded enthusiastically.

"That's the time," she said. She had actually been quite proud of herself for hitting him. In any case, her father approved. "Little bastard."

"Seriously, though, 'roko-chan, ya date the weirdest people," Aki said. "First Hotaka, then that other guy, then...Ryu-what's-his-face."

In that instant, when L looked up and Hiroko focused her glazed eyes, both harbored nearly the same expression, drunkenness aside. And said the same words, more or less, albeit with some major slurring on the wasted one's part.

"We aren't dating," both chimed.

"It's classified," L said.

"I'd never date him," Hiroko said. "Annoying little evil one, he is."

"Hiroko-chan, I do believe that you're shorter than I am," L told her.

"Hey! I'm not that short," Hiroko claimed. "I ain't short; I'm fun-size!" she told the other girls. They laughed, and Aki passed out from alcohol consumption.

"Uh-oh!" Emiko trilled. "First one passed out gets the Sharpie on the face, you know the rules!"

L watched in a mixture of disgust, curiosity, and slight amusement as Emiko started scribbling nonsense on Aki's face with a black Sharpie marker. Hiroko opted to stay out of it, instead propping herself up against the table. Her world was, literally, spinning. She wondered if the other girls felt that way, too.

"M'kay, I wanna go to sleep," Mizuki announced, holding her head. "I'm gettin' tired, an' my head kinda hurts."

"I do, too..." Emiko whimpered. Kaede said nothing; she was already passed out in a living room chair. L looked over to a suddenly-silent Hiroko, to find that she had passed out, as well. He found that if he stared down, the remaining two drunk girls wouldn't see him as they left the room. Or more, one stumbled down the hallway, and the other randomly ran out the door. L briefly considered going after her - a drunk college girl shouldn't be wandering the streets alone at night - but discarded the idea; that would mean dragging Hiroko with him, dealing with her, and that girl.

Now that he was the last one awake, there was no way he was staying in that infernal house with the sickening lighting and still-blaring music, without his laptop to work on anything. He managed to inch over to the stereo and turn it off successfully without waking Hiroko up and fished his cell phone out of his pocket. The sudden silence rang in his ears, but it was good not to have that God-awful music assaulting him. That combined with the drunk girls and the lights had been a big sensory overload for him.

"Watari?" he asked once said man had picked up. "I apologize for waking you at this ungodly hour, however, I require transportation, and Hiroko-chan is not fit to walk. ...No, she is uninjured, simply drunk. _Extremely_ drunk. ...Thank you, Watari."

L stowed away his phone and turned to the task of waking Hiroko. He accomplished this by flicking peanuts at her for five minutes. After a while, Hiroko opened her eyes and stared blankly at the detective. Then her senses actually kicked in, and she dropped her head into her hands. Hangovers were a bitch...

"Hiroko-chan, get up," L ordered. "Watari has brought transportation." When Hiroko didn't rise, he threw another peanut. He wasn't going to haul her out the door; he hated physical contact. So he kept throwing peanuts, and dumped a few in his pocket for good measure, in case he needed them later on.

"Will ya stop throwin' shit?" Hiroko mumbled, unsteadily rising to her feet. " 's annoyin'."

"Be quiet," L told her. "Come along." Lord, it was like talking to a retarded dog, L found as he led Hiroko outside. Once on the front porch, L saw where that one girl had gotten off to; she had collapsed in the garden, beer bottle in hand. Hiroko didn't seem to notice, and Watari chuckled good-humoredly at Hiroko's pained appearance, this time caused not from illness, but from alcohol.

"Thank you, Watari," L said, pegging Hiroko with more peanuts to get her into the car. Watari didn't even blink an eye at that; he was used to L's odd activities, and pelting Hiroko with peanuts didn't even make the list.

"You be'er stoppit, ya little brat," Hiroko said.

L, still a tad put off by the mental stimulation of the party, snapped at her, irritated. "Oh, be quiet and get in the car, 'Little Miss Virgin'."

Looking a tad hurt, Hiroko obliged the detective and got into the car. She felt sluggish and very, very pissed off. "M'kay, that was over the top," she said. "No need to be nasty."

Watari was glancing in the rear-view mirror, a questioning look on his face as he looked at L.

"Hiroko-chan's friends are very...interesting when intoxicated," L explained. "And Hiroko-chan is very free with information, as well. By the way, Hiroko-chan: Kira." That was all he needed to say.

"Ugh, for the millionth time, Ryuzaki," Hiroko groaned, "I'm not Kira. Jesus fuckin' Christ, do I need to hire a goddamn advertisement comp'ny, 'r somethin'?"

Out of pure spite, L tossed another peanut at her.

^*FAIL DIVIDER OF FAIL*^ (A/N: why did fanfiction get rid of the dividers? I liked them...)

The floor, Hiroko found, was the best place to be when you had a hangover. It was nice and cold, and L refused to sit there with you. That may have been the best part. She didn't quite care that her arm was being randomly jerked about every so often, as long as she had the cold floor. Since L refused to sit on the floor, he was sitting in his bed, and Hiroko was just sort of collapsed on the floor beside that. At the moment, she didn't really care how weird it must look. If she turned her head up, she could make out the time on the alarm clock. Wow. Three in the afternoon. No wonder her hangover seemed to be going away.

Eventually, at around four, Hiroko sat up, happy to find that the world was no longer spinning, and everything was a normal color again - she would have to speak to Kaede about those terrible lights.

"Remind me again never, ever to let you drag me to something Kaede thought up," Hiroko said. "God, that was awful."

"Let?" L asked. Hiroko glared, even though he wasn't looking at her.

"Oh, just let it go, Ryuzaki," she said. "I'm still hungover; whatever I say, I'm not accountable for it."

"Yes, you are," L said. Hiroko wasn't sure if he was doing that because it was his job, or because he enjoyed pissing her off. Most likely both. "By the way, one of your friends must have woken up during the night, because she made several drunken phone calls to your cell phone."

"I'll be sure to hold those against her," Hiroko said. "Where is it?"

"Across the room, where I threw it after turning it off," L answered.

"I'll call her back later," Hiroko said. "Oh, and if you say anything about whatever I did last night to anyone, I will have to kill you."

"Your Kira percentage has been raised by six," L told her.

"Hey! Remember, still hungover here," Hiroko commented half-heartedly; she didn't expect any other answer anymore. L only stopped to answer the phone.

"Good afternoon Watari...yes...all right then. We can handle it, I assure you. Goodbye."

'We'? That couldn't be good...

"What's up?" Hiroko inquired hesitantly.

"Watari seems to have fallen ill," L said. Hiroko groaned.

"Aw, crap. I didn't give it to him, did I?"

"Most likely not; you had a 24-hour illness, while Watari seems to have caught a common cold. In any case, we will have to be self-sufficient for a few days. The Task Force is extremely busy following up new leads, so-"

"So now I actually am a zookeeper," Hiroko finished. "This is going to be interesting."

**A/N: Uh-oh... I forsee someone getting throttled. Or pissed-out-of-their-mind. **

**Is it just me, or does it seem like L has SID? You know, Sensory Integration Disorder (aka: Sensory Processing Disorder)? Maybe it's just me; I myself have SID, so I'm probably seeing what I think I see. Let me know if you feel like it!**

**Sorry if some of this made zero sense; it was written at 3AM, and it's a few hours after that now! YAY for no sleep! :D **

**And once again, next chapter may be a tad late, so sorry! D: But I will throw in some of that fabled thing called PLOT later.  
**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hello, All! Sorry this is a tad late; I've been busy. So in this chapter there is the usual crack, followed by an intro to plot! Let's see how I do with it. So...yeah. What do I usually put here, anyway? Meh, whatever. Here it is!**

With Watari being sick, Hiroko now had the full-time job of looking after L. It wasn't too hard, only when he was breathing. Hiroko hadn't noticed how often Watari helped their day go by easier, and began to revere him as a God-like being halfway into the first day. Now, she had to listen to his incessant ramblings on the oddest of topics, though she had absolutely no feedback. L didn't seem to care; he just kept talking. He only paused when he was hungry - then he complained - or to tell her to get back to work.

By eight in the afternoon, Hiroko was reduced to plugging her hears by clapping her hands over them, staring at her computer screen. She was still researching that damn encryption. It had seemed to come out of nowhere - she couldn't find it, she wasn't able to locate the device it came from. All she knew was that it was annoyingly familiar, and that little fact continued to nag her all throughout her work.

"Ryuzaki, where's my computer?" Hiroko asked, finally taking her hands off her ears. It was childish, yes, and her fingers hurt, but it was effective, and that was what was important in the end. "This would go a lot faster if I had my computer with me; I've got tons of stuff downloaded that could help me figure this out."

"It has been confiscated upon pending investigation," L replied. Hiroko sighed.

"Of course it has," she muttered. "Along with pretty much everything else I own, and myself, of course. When can I get it back?"

"Once they're through inspecting it," L said. Hiroko glared, but didn't have the energy to argue anymore. It just wasn't worth it.

Eventually what drove her insane was when L started to complain about being hungry. Truly, she found, he was worse than her three little brothers combined. Hiroko ended up dragging him into his kitchen and telling him to have at it.

"You're twenty-something years old, you should know how to concoct a basic meal," she said. L blinked. "Of course you don't," Hiroko sighed. She began to look through the cabinets, grimacing when she found that there was really nothing there - all L ever really ate were store-bought things, rendering most of the kitchen useless.

"Sugar-free gelatin?" Hiroko read, gingerly holding a small box. "I'm assuming that's a no ... as well as the probably-expired gluten-free crackers. Seriously, Ryuzaki, who uses this kitchen?"

"No-one," L said, watching Hiroko's frustration curiously. "Not even Watari does. And I certainly don't."

"Honestly, you really do need to figure out how to make something, or do a simple household chore," Hiroko said automatically. Her brothers had given her a reflex of mild scolding when they were lazy, and she was both amused and sorry when she found herself using it when talking to L. "I mean, using a microwave, something, anything."

L did not reply - Hiroko seemed to simply be on autopilot. She was becoming a tad boring, and L decided that he preferred Watari as a caretaker. Watari never told him that he actually needed to know how to do any of this.

"Hiroko-chan, why are you repeatedly looking through this obviously empty kitchen?" he eventually asked. "There is nothing here. You have checked that cabinet twice, that other one three times. Each time there is nothing in it. The fourth time will still hold that fact."

"Because there's no way that I'm going back to work only to listen to your kvetching," Hiroko muttered. She knew full well that she had looked through the entire kitchen at least three times. "And because the entire Task Force is busy, far too much to drive us to the store to actually get something. I'm assuming you can't drive?"

"I know the basics," L claimed.

"From watching Watari when there's nothing interesting out the window," Hiroko amended. "And I'm assuming you won't let me drive, seeing as I might be a serial killer and drive off a cliff or whatever."

"Aside from the part about the cliff, as there are none in the area, you are correct, Hiroko-chan."

"So what do you propose I do now? I am not and will never willingly give a human being pure carbohydrates as a meal. I simply won't."

L's response was seemingly to be the most annoying person Hiroko had ever met in her entire life. The two bickered for a while, which seemed to drag on forever.

"Okay, rule time," Hiroko exclaimed after ten straight minutes of arguing. "Since Watari is sick, he obviously cannot cook food or do much of anything for you. I am not a zookeeper, got it? I never took a Home Economics course, and I barely know how to work an oven, let alone cook anything in it!" Hiroko pointed towards said oven. "Whatever the hell comes out of that, is what is going to be put in front of you. Okay?"

L looked at her as if she had gone insane. Which, she supposed, she may have; ten minutes of an annoying insomniac whining at you could probably make even the most caring kindergarten teacher run for the steak knives. The nice kind with the serrated edges and easy-grip handles.

Hiroko didn't wait for, or want, his response, and dragged him about the kitchen. Being raised in a healthy family, there was no way in hell she could escape with a clean conscience if she fed L cake as an actual meal, though Watari did it every day. So she did what any hungover college student was prone to doing: tossing random ingredients into a pot and sticking it onto the oven to boil. L watched from a few feet away, one eyebrow arched. While 'cooking', Hiroko was mainly trying to think of some sort of way to keep herself from murdering the detective. Her distraction may have been a key factor in the substance that began bubbling in the pot.

Finally, Hiroko took it off the burner when it seemed done; aka, when she was afraid the smoke detector would go off if she were to cook it any longer.

L actually leaned away from the bowl of gray stuff Hiroko pushed in front of him. There were disturbing amounts of stringy things in it, some lumpy things, and what may have been rice in a past life.

"Take it," Hiroko ordered.

"Hiroko-chan, no one in their right mind would consume whatever this is," L said.

"I told you before that whatever came off that oven was what was going to be what I stuck in front of you," Hiroko reminded him.

"However, you did not mention that I actually had to eat it," L countered. "Hiroko-chan, look at that. Would you eat that?"

Hiroko glanced down at the bowlful of...substance and considered it. Stirring it with a spoon, she found that it had already developed a thin, semi-solid layer on the top. Underneath, it was liquid and soup-like. Aside from the chunks.

"No," she declared. "Because unlike some people, I actually care about what I shove down my throat. I have standards."

"As do I," L said. "And this is far past them."

Hiroko sighed and ran a hand through her tangled hair. "Okay, fine, you're right," she grudgingly admitted. "Whatever the hell this is, no human, animal, or otherwise is fit to eat it. What do I do now, seeing as I'm out of ideas and I just want to sleep?"

"That is your own fault," L said. "You chose to stay up all night long, nursing a hangover."

"Oh, don't you tell me what's my fault and what isn't," Hiroko snapped. "Forget it, I'm calling Light."

"That isn't my job anymore," Light ended up saying.

By that point, Hiroko had swallowed her pride, and then some. "Please, Light, you've got to be better at cooking than I am."

"Just give him sugar, for God's sake," Light said. "That's what happens on a daily basis."

"Yeah, well, my conscience would be nagging me for the rest of my life if I let anyone actually eat sugar for a meal. It comes with the territory of having three little brothers. And besides, there's none here, and everyone's too busy to go out."

"Where's Watari, anyway? Nobody's seen him today."

"Apparently caught a cold, he's staying in his room so nobody else gets it. So I'm stuck here."

"Then order out," Light said. "That's what I did once."

"Did that work?"

"No; he hated me for two weeks."

Hiroko sighed. "I don't know what he's done to you to make you such a cold-hearted person," she lamented sarcastically. Ignoring Light's pissed-off rebuttals, she hung the phone up and slumped down in a chair, out of options. On one hand, she could give L nothing and literally go crazy from listening to him complain. On the other hand, she could give him cake; very... Marie Antoinette. She wouldn't have to listen to his complaints, though she wouldn't forgive herself for a very long time. Six of one, half a dozen of the other...

Hiroko, always the stubborn one, decided to take Option C: go through the cabinets. Again. She was moderately certain that L thought she had a severe mental deficiency by now, but she was tired, fed up, and extremely frustrated, both with the detective and the near-impossible tasks she had to deal with.

"Okay, we've sort of got something..." Digging around behind pans and pots, Hiroko found a box of cake mix. Well, at least it meant that she could make it. A small comfort, but it at least made it seem as if she had accomplished something. "D'you have any idea how to make this?" she asked, checking the box. "Oh look, I saw eggs in the fridge, and water from the sink, and even butter."

"And that combined creates cake?" L asked dubiously.

"According to the box, I have to put it in the oven," Hiroko said. "Oh, don't give me that look, it even says what temperature to cook it at, and for how long. It shouldn't turn out too badly. Here," she said, hefting a bowl off a shelf and opening the box. "You pour this...powder stuff in the bowl, and I'll find the other stuff."

L gingerly took the plastic bag of brownish powder, glancing back over to make sure Hiroko wasn't about to grab a kitchen cleaver or something. No, she was simply trying to figure out how much butter was supposed to go in.

"When it says softened, does it mean I put it in the microwave?" she speculated. "Ryuzaki, make sure you don't hold the bag up too-"

Too late for warnings, L upended the bag into the bowl, and a large cloud of it rose and clung to anything and everything. Hiroko coughed into her shirtsleeve, trying to wipe brown powder off her pants, with little success.

"High," she finished slowly. "Somehow, I'm not even that upset; more...disappointed in myself for not knowing this would happen."

After the rest of the ingredients were added - with little dispute between Hiroko and L - L put the cake int he oven while Hiroko cleaned the kitchen over and over and over until L tried to force her to stop.

"It's still dirty," Hiroko told him, scrubbing at a spot on the counter that refused to come off

Twenty minutes later, Hiroko stopped cleaning to slide a greasy pan of normal-seeming out of the oven as someone else entered the now-pristine kitchen.

"Whoa, what happened in here?" Matsuda asked, surveying the state of the room, and the two people in it. There was still brown powder dusting every surface, bits of broken eggshell scattered on the floor, and both L and Hiroko were splattered in the mixture from when L refused to let Hiroko use the electric mixer with the claim that she could use it as a weapon.

"It's hard to explain," Hiroko said, "but long story short: I now appreciate my mother much more than I ever have before."

"Matsuda-san, why are you here?" L asked.

"Oh, right. The Chief told me to find you guys," Matsuda said. "We've made a breakthrough on the Kira case."

L immediately looked interested. Also curious, Hiroko allowed herself to be dragged back to the main Headquarters room. Soichiro, Aizawa, Mogi, everyone Hiroko knew and others she didn't were all crowded around something.

"What's up?" Hiroko asked.

"We found where that encryption code came from," Soichiro said. Starting to become creeped out, Hiroko wondered why everyone was looking at her.

"Oh, great! I was starting to think I'd never find it," Hiroko said, her light attitude losing it's brightness by the end. "...So, where was it? What was it protecting?" she prodded.

"Hiroko, it came from your own computer," Light told her. He gestured to her old laptop, the one L told her had been confiscated. Hiroko saw a small white window flickering on it. And there was that damned code running across the window.

"This isn't looking so great for my Kira percentage, is it?" she blurted. L looked doubtfully at her and shook his head.

Well, crap.

**A/N: Yay, plot! ...ish. Meh, whatever. **

**Okay, so I've got a huge trip coming up, and I'm pretty busy preparing, so once again, late next chapter. **

**Oh, and my friend convinced me to get a blog, so I'm using it to rant about stuff. Blah blah blah, link's on my profile, all that jazz. Happy, Zio_23? I advertised; get off my back now. ^^**

**Review, flame, print it out and eat it. Whatever. :)  
**


	7. Just an AN, sorry! I'm a lamewad

Hey guys, this is just a kind of fail Author's Note. I know it's against regulations to post a chapter consisting of purely an AN, but I kind of needed it.

There's a poll on my profile that I need some feedback on before I can finalize the next chapter of this fanfic. So if you've got time, I'd love it if you could go vote! Thanks.

Once again, sorry for spamming you with this failure "chapter" but I'll hopefully have the REAL chapter up soon! I'm going on a trip soon so I won't have a lot of time to write, though. But the next chapter will be out soon, all that jazz, blah blah blah, something about corn.

If you have any questions about the poll on my profile, feel free to ask!

Okay, I'm done. And I swear, I'm writing up the next chapter AS WE SPEAK! (epic Batman theme song plays)

~Kolkolkol


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Hello everyone! Thanks for voting on the poll; I've decided not to hint at L/Light, since the majority of people decided that they would call me a lamewad and hate me for life. I got enough of that in grade school, thanks very much, so that's that.  
In this chapter we shall meet Near, Matt, and Mello; sorry if they're a tad OOC, because I've never written for them before. Plus, Matt got, like, four seconds of screentime or whatever - aka: most of what I perceive as their personalities comes from fanfiction. :D**

For the second time in Hiroko's life - more specifically, the second time in just under a month - she was sitting in an interrogation room. The good news was that she wasn't handcuffed to L. Bad news was that she was mostly positive that he was watching her from behind the large, obviously two-way mirror. Or perhaps from one of the blatantly obvious security cameras mounted in the corners. Hiroko wondered if it was like on one of those bad cop shows, back when she had cable; they make you sit in one of these creepy rooms for a while to make you crack, or something.

Just in case that was it, Hiroko sighed and slumped in her chair, as if she were bored. Internally, she laughed wryly; she was nothing if not stubborn. And hotheaded, but that was only the input of an old boyfriend. She wondered if the whole handcuffed-to-a-maniac, interrogated-by-federal-officers thing would look bad to the University.

Genuinely bored after a few minutes, Hiroko started tapping her fingers on the table. Damn, it really was like those cop shows. Sort of. Sad, in a way. She wondered when someone was going to come in. Light, maybe. Soichiro. Aizawa. Hell, she'd even take L again. Maybe. She was getting antsy, just sitting in this little room. She couldn't see anyone, but she knew full well that they could see her. God, that was weird.

In an attempt to calm down a little, Hiroko rested her head on folded arms; maybe she could at least use this time to get some sleep. However, whoever was watching her chose that time to make his appearance. Hiroko stopped herself from groaning; this was exactly what happened when you were desperate. You started wishing for things, lowering your expectations, and when they were low enough, that was exactly what you got, leaving you cursing yourself that you ever thought you could settle for something that low.

L sat with his usual posture opposite Hiroko, watching her intently.

"So, what's going on?" she asked. "I know this looks really bad, but I know there's an explanation."

"Hiroko-chan has been keeping information from me," L stated. "I know that she will not admit to being Kira, so I will ask her this: where do you keep your computer?"

"It's always with me at school, and it's in my room when I'm home," Hiroko said.

"Does anyone else have access?"

"Yeah, I share my computer with this guy from my computer tech class-"

"What's his name?" L interrupted.

"Koide Nobumoto. He's in college on a scholarship, didn't have much money for anything, so we alternated with the computer. He rarely needed it, but I loaned it to him whenever he asked."

"How often was that?" L asked.

"I don't know, it wasn't scheduled or anything. You think it was him?"

"How often?" L asked again.

"On average, about once every month, month and a half," Hiroko muttered, swiping her hair out of her face. She had been wrong; this wasn't like those bad cop shows on TV. This was a lot worse; now, she had to make the ever-suspicious L that she wasn't Kira, or she would have to spend the rest of her life in jail. And to think just a few months ago her biggest worry had been finals.

"What would he use it for? How long would he have it?" L questioned.

"It was usually just, like, two days, four max," Hiroko tried to recall. "He said it was just classwork, and I believed him; why wouldn't I? We shared two classes together."

"You already mentioned Computer Tech; what was the other class?"

"C++ Data Structure and Algorithm, I think it was."

"And this Koide, what was he like? Socially, academically?"

"Like I said, he was a scholarship student, and he was so smart. He was top in nearly all his classes, but never told anyone what he wanted to actually be once he got out of college. To tell you the truth, he was kind of disturbing. He sat in the back, mostly, never volunteering for anything. If you were going to pass by him and glance at his computer in class, you would barely be able to follow what he was doing. Academically, he was incredible. Socially, though, he could only be worse if he were a psycho killer. He wouldn't talk to many people, ignored a lot of them, insulted those he didn't ignore." Hiroko paused. "Actually, he was kind of like you, just a little less creepy."

L ignored the last bit and swiveled his chair back toward the large mirror. "Watari, run a check on a Koide Nobumoto." And thus Hiroko's paranoia about the mirror/window was proven to be well-founded. That wasn't creepy at all. L turned back to Hiroko. "What did he look like?"

"Koide was about my age, twenty or so, and he was really, really tall - I'd estimate about 5'8. Short, black hair, dark brown eyes, there was really nothing special about him," Hiroko said. "Well, not in appearance. Look, Ryuzaki, I know this is looking pretty bad for me. But I'd just like to say that before you arrest me or whatever, you've got to meet Koide. The guy's a real creeper."

"Who did Koide choose to spend his time with, outside of classes?" L asked. He seemed to have ignored everything Hiroko said after her description. Again.

"I didn't see him with too many people. Well, sometimes the brave ones would come up to him with a technical issue, he'd fix it or give advice, and they'd leave pretty quickly. Sometimes even the teachers were iffy about talking to him for very often. But aside from all that, he'd talk to me every so often."

Hiroko and L turned toward the door as Watari knocked, stepping in. L got up and followed him back into the hall, leaving Hiroko by herself in the little room. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling, contemplating Koide. He was a bizarre person, but she'd never once thought of him as a serial killer, and definitely not Kira. In her opinion, Koide didn't have the balls.

"Hiroko-chan," L said, returning to the room. Hiroko really wished he would give her a little hint at what he was thinking; his emotionless expression was really setting her on edge. "There is no Koide Nobumoto on record at your university. So I suggest you start telling the truth. What is that encryption on your computer?"

"Wait a sec," Hiroko said, shaking her head. "You must've messed up. Koide sits right behind me in C++, he always has, we've been competing for grades since we met, of course he exists."

"You're becoming hysterical."

"No, I'm confused and anxious," Hiroko corrected. "Because I don't want to go to jail because you couldn't find Koide."

"We couldn't locate this Koide because he doesn't exist," L said firmly. "What is the encryption?"

"I don't know, he told me not to look at what he worked on, and I respected that," Hiroko said. "And he does exist, I remember him, I talked to him, I saw him every day."

L studied her for a moment, absentmindedly raising a thumb to his mouth. Hiroko was nervously twisting her hair around her finger, biting her lip, and bouncing one foot on the ground. But she wasn't blinking excessively, she consistently met his eyes, and didn't stutter once in her descriptions of this Koide.

"Hiroko-chan, where were you before we brought you in?" L finally asked.

Arching an eyebrow, Hiroko said, "Home, probably, I never go far. What's this have to do with Koide? Or anything, for that matter?"

"What were you doing?" L asked persistently.

"Most likely re-enrolling in college, can we get back to whether I'm going to jail or not?" Hiroko asked tightly.

_Not comfortable with change of subject away from the original,_ L noted.

"I mean, why are you asking me what I was doing before you dragged me in here? What purpose does this serve?" Hiroko tried to get his attention again; L seemed to be spacing out, staring down at the table in front of him.

"What do you use your laptop for?" L asked her after a moment.

"Schoolwork, mostly, and personal uses, as well," Hiroko said. "I don't have the money to buy separate laptops."

"Define personal uses," L requested.

"Emailing friends, social networking sites, storing pictures, browsing the internet, stuff like that. During my break from college, I used it to try to find local jobs, seeing as I not only no longer had somewhere to live, but I also had nowhere to eat or do anything else."

"You disappeared off our radar for about two hours a week - always on the same day, same time. Where were you?"

"I told you, I was at therapy," Hiroko said. "I have OCD, it's in my medical file which I'm sure you'll have no trouble pulling."

"What's your therapist's name?"

"Hatamata-sensei, first name Utako, you can look her up. She's got a degree and everything; saw the diplomas on her wall. Bugged me because one of them wasn't straight."

L glanced at the mirror again and nodded.

"Will you stop doing that?" Hiroko snapped. "It's creepy, knowing that someone is watching from behind what looks like a normal household object."

L ignored her and suddenly just got up and left the room. Hiroko stared.

"Okay then, I guess I'll wait here," she said. The stupid walls of the interrogation room were too thick for Hiroko to hear what was going on in the hallway, and she had no clue as to if anyone was even there. She sighed again and looked at the wall, pointedly ignoring the mirror, which was still getting on her nerves.

_Maybe he's right_, she thought. _After all, he's the World's Greatest Detective, and you're a college Computer Tech major with OCD. He's totally got the upper hand there. He could be right; you could just be crazy, blaming something you did on someone who doesn't actually exist. ...but Koide does exist, Hiroko, don't be an idiot. He sat behind you, you talked to him, he borrowed your compu_- he borrowed your computer.

That was it! Hiroko sat up straight and looked back to the door. Of course, L hadn't come back. So she looked to that stupid mirror.

"Hey, guys, whoever's back there? I know how I can prove Koide exists," Hiroko called, trailing off when she got no response. Feeling like an idiot for talking to an inanimate object, she continued. "Koide borrowed my computer, his fingerprints should be on it, right? Check the laptop for fingerprints other than mine, which I'm sure you've already got on file somewhere."

There was no answer. Not that Hiroko was actually expecting one.

However, she was able to hear something besides the air conditioning when the door opened again about ten minutes later. This time, a short, white-haired boy followed L into the room. Hiroko arched an eyebrow when L chose to stand - well, slouch - in the back of the room, and the boy sat across from her. He sat just like L did, to Hiroko's disappointment.

"Hiroko-chan, this is Near, one of my successors," L said, and fell silent. Hiroko and Near exchanged a glance, and Hiroko was immediately put off.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Sixteen," Near muttered. He obviously wasn't used to not being the questioner, and ignored anything Hiroko was about to say. "What you said about fingerprints-"

"Wait, so you were watching me from the mirror?" Hiroko interrupted.

"Yes, don't interrupt," Near commanded. Hiroko shut up merely from surprise that a sixteen-year-old was ordering her around. "We checked your laptop for fingerprints. It was clean of any besides your own recent ones."

It took Hiroko a moment to respond. "Recent? He could've wiped it down or something before he gave it back to me, then, right?"

"However, you yourself testified that because of your OCD, you clean your laptop frequently," Near said. Hiroko inwardly cursed at herself; what a fine habit.

"Okay, scratch that idea. Try calling up my C++ and Computer Tech professors, they'll know him. Maybe there was just a glitch or something that wiped him out of the system," she offered.

L turned to the mirror and nodded again. Glancing back at Hiroko, he said, "Hiroko-chan, listen to yourself. Koide does not exist. You know this. Perhaps appealing to your obviously-heightened sense of dignity will force you to admit this and tell us the truth."

"I'm being questioned by a teenager in his pajamas," Hiroko said, her voice a monotone. "Whatever dignity I managed to retain is quite clearly obliterated."

Before L could say anything, the door opened again and two more people walked in. One was a tall blond in leather pants and a large scar across his face, the other a brunette whose eyes were obscured by tinted goggles. The blond glared at Near as he entered.

"Hiroko-chan, my other successors, Matt and Mello," L said, and turned to them. "What have you found?"

"Her therapist, this Hatamata chick, actually does exist," Matt said. "And Hiroko-chan has been a weekly patient of hers since three years ago, goes every Tuesday at six."

_Yep, no dignity, _and_ no privacy either,_ Hiroko thought.

"However," Mello took over, "we reran the search for Koide, and couldn't find him again. And neither of the professors they allegedly shared have ever heard of Koide Nobumoto."

Hiroko sighed. _I just can't catch a break, can I?_ She shook her head and decided to watch L's successors. Near had stopped paying any attention to anyone and was currently stacking dice; Mello was leaning against the wall and eating chocolate; and Matt's gaze was glued to a Nintendo DS, the colors on the screen reflecting in his goggles.

_These are the three successors to the World's Greatest Detective? I thought they'd be...less mental._

"Isolation," Near murmured. Hiroko blinked and cocked an eyebrow. L nodded and looked to Mello, who grinned and ducked out of the room, returning with the handcuffs.

"What's going on?" Hiroko asked, eying L as Mello gave him the shackles.

"Hands," he said. Bewildered, Hiroko held her arms out, but L shook his head and motioned for her to stand up. Twisting her arms behind her back, he clasped the handcuffs over both of her hands.

"Ryuzaki, what the hell is going on?" Hiroko demanded again.

"Near is right," he said. "If you can not or will not admit that Koide does not exist, then you will be put in isolation."

"Oh, well that's just great."

**A/N: Hooray, plot! And once again, sorry for the possible OOC-ness of Near, Matt, and Mello; corrections/suggestions for their behavior are welcome! And thanks again for voting on the poll!**

**Flame, review, feed it to your cat. My cat likes it when I jiggle his belly fat chanting, "Buddha Buddha Buddha." I know, you totally needed to know that, right?**

**Oh, and has anyone heard about that weird guy who was dressed as Captain America? He groped a nurse a while back, and he's apparently not getting any jail time. He had a burrito down his pants. ^^ I thought that was strange.  
**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Okay, so, this is mainly a short bit which gives some background on some of the plot. ...Ish. Well, okay, in any case, I've got most of the rest of the story planned out, and the next chapter is basically written, and I'll have the next one up probably on Sunday.**

**Oh, and normal text is...well, normal. Italics are either thoughts or memories; it should be simple to tell the difference. And, hopefully, the separators I've inserted between present tense and memories will stay, since fanfiction . net is being evil about those. **

_I have never been more bored in my life,_ Hiroko thought. _Well, maybe at that one symposium...nah, at least I got to watch a Powerpoint presentation about something._

Hiroko was lying sideways on a bench, her head and arms hanging off so she was looking around upside down. As promised, L had put her in isolation, which meant sticking her in a small room that reminded Hiroko of the jail cells she'd seen on TV. She decided she really needed to watch less TV. In the ceiling corner, a small video camera was set. Hiroko stared at it, for lack of anything else to do. Sure, there was a sink, but she had washed her hands so much that they were now red, which reminded her of something.

"Hey, Ryuzaki? I think you forgot about something," she said, sitting up a little wobbly as the blood rushed to her head. "I'm supposed to be taking fluvoxamine each morning, so how long am I going to be in here?" She looked at the camera, only half-expecting an answer. Sighing, she flopped back on the bench and started humming to herself, staring at the ceiling.

()()()

_"Hey, Koide-chan! Koide-chan!" Hiroko called, waving and running across the lawn. The man turned, and a rare grin crossed his face._

_"Hiroko-chan, hello," he said softly. "How are you?"_

_"I'm fine; you?"_

_Koide shrugged. "Nothing special," he murmured. "Have you done your homework for C++ yet?"_

_"Of course I have, took me all night to finish it. Damn algorithms. Did you?"_

_"It wasn't too difficult." Koide looked up at the sky, idly tapping his fingers on his leg. Hiroko scoffed and snapped her fingers in front of his face._

_"Hello-o, Koide-chan, you in there?" she asked in a false singsong voice. Koide blinked and looked back down at her._

_"Of course I am, Hiroko," he said seriously. "Why would I not be?"_

_Hiroko rolled her eyes. "Whatever, we've got to get to C++, remember?"_

_"Yes, class, of course," Koide murmured. "Oh, and Hiroko, may I borrow your computer again after school?"_

_"Yeah, sure, of course," Hiroko said, giving him a smile. "But first, class. Wouldn't want to fail, now would we?"_

_()()()()()  
_

Looking back on it, it was much easier to believe that Koide had been Kira. Or, at least, working for him indirectly, or whatever. Hiroko bit her lip; this sucked. Nobody even believed that Koide existed. Unfortunately for her, Hiroko had nothing besides memories of him, and she'd tried almost everything.

When she suggested they look on her phone for his number, the blond had told her that 'the number you have reached is not in service at this time.'

None of Hiroko's professors seemed to know him, and none of Hiroko's friends did, either. But that wasn't surprising - Hiroko's friends were spread out, academically, and she never talked about Koide to any of them. Why? Because they just didn't want to hear it, and they had no idea who she was talking about, anyhow.

The best Hiroko had been able to do was describe Koide to someone, who then promptly left.

()()()()()()

_Being stuck in this little hellhole sucked, that was for sure._

_"Hey, Kaede?"_

_"What, Hiroko? Oh, and can you make it quick, I've got my Sociology class in five minutes," Kaede reminded her as they hurriedly walked down the halls of the University. It was bright out, and Kaede had donned a fashionable pair of sunglasses, while Hiroko had opted for the more modest baseball cap._

_"Do you know anyone named Koide?"_

_"Koide?" Kaede looked lost._

_"Tall, black hair, doesn't like to talk much?" Hiroko prompted._

_"Girl, you just described half the guys on this campus," Kaede giggled._

_"Koide Nobumoto," she clarified, laughing._

_"Who?"_

_"So you don't know him?"_

_"Not a clue."_

_Hiroko shrugged, grinned, and the two friends split on their ways to their classes._

_And that was that._

_()()()()()()  
_

She'd never questioned the fact that none of her friends seemed to know who Koide was. Then again, she'd never talked about Koide in front of them much - what was there to talk about? He had no connection with any of her friends, as most of them were outside her major. They took different classes, had different teachers, different classmates, hell, it felt like they spoke different _languages_ sometimes! The most Hiroko ever talked about with Kaede - and her other few friends outside Tech majors - was school gossip, who was dating who, who broke up with who, etc. Nothing of substance, nothing worth anything.

It was like nobody knew him. Like he was invisible to everyone - and that wasn't surprising. Hiroko knew that Koide was socially challenged, he didn't quite know how to talk to people very well, and he was simply awkward around anyone in general. Except Hiroko - in fact, she believed that she might be the only one on campus who ever talked to him, beyond a few words or technical troubleshooting.

_Okay, this means one of two things, _Hiroko thought.

One: Koide is just shy, and nobody knows him because nobody cares.

or Two: The reason nobody knows him is because he doesn't exist.

Hiroko bit her lip. The logical choice was the second one, mainly because it wasn't just that people didn't know his name; even the system didn't know it. He didn't appear anywhere, like he had just dropped off the radar the second Hiroko was brought in. Almost like he'd never existed...

_No, don't think like that!_ she scolded herself. Don't think that way. _He exists, don't let Ryuzaki get into your head._

But really, it was hard to keep hope that he still existed when all the evidence pointed against it. And when you were left to your own thoughts, without any means of research or confirmation, you tended to doubt yourself. And really, almost all the evidence said Koide wasn't real, not just some of it.

_Okay, just lay out the facts,_ Hiroko told herself in an attempt to calm down.

No fingerprints besides Hiroko's were on her laptop.

Neither teachers nor students had ever heard of any Koide Nobumoto.

He also wasn't in any system.

Or newspapers, television, or any other media.

The only evidence that Hiroko had to her defense were her memories. What good were those? She assumed that the only reason she hadn't been put on some sort of lie detector thing was because, with proper training, one could theoretically beat it, making it think that they were telling the truth when they were actually lying. So scratch memories.

Instead of spending even more time futilely trying to figure out a way to convince the four creepy ones watching her, Hiroko decided to give herself a break and just think, not deduce, not figure anything out, just think.

Turns out, just thinking and letting her thoughts run like an idle car just made Hiroko remember all the strange times she'd had with her old friend. The time she'd caught him looking up strange serial killers online. The time he'd been holed up in the library for hours with stacks upon stacks of odd books on things like guns and methods of medieval torture. The time that Koide had been in one of his apathetic moods, the ones where he seemed to show absolutely no emotion at all, so much that Hiroko had been worried and spent the time she should have been in Microeconomics class poring over psychology books. The two-in-the-morning calls from Koide when he couldn't sleep, the eleven-at-night texts. The times Hiroko had been hanging out with Koide in his living room and found some sort of pill or syringe in between the couch cushions. When confronted, Koide claimed he never once used them; he was just curious. And yeah, she pretty much believed him - his rented apartment was creepy, filled with bad lighting and randomly-placed books.

Hiroko absently rolled over on the bench and gazed at the barred gate to her isolation cell. Confused, she sat up and squinted at one of the horizontal bars. Carefully placed on the shoulder-level bar was a small white pill. Okay...so someone had silently crept up, stuck the pill on the bar, and crept away. Hiroko smirked wryly; well, at least she could still take her fluvoxamine this way.

But damn, they were serious about this isolation thing, weren't they?

**A/N: Well, as I said, I suck for releasing a short chapter, the one will be up shortly. And it'll be longer. Probably. XD**

**Oh, and if anyone here likes Mello/Matt angst, I wrote a random one-shot. It's on my profile, and it's my first time writing angst; so, naturally, I'd love feedback on it. So...yeah. Shameless pimping of my one-shot. XD**

**Arrivederci, people. Feedback is lovely, both on this and my one-shot.  
**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Like I said, next chapter's out quick! :D Oooooh, and this is a longer one! YAY! **

_Why couldn't Koide be Kira?_

Hiroko had wondered over and over again how he could be, but her mind refused to come up with an answer. Reversing the question often helped in classes, so Hiroko saw no way why it wouldn't now.

_Koide couldn't be Kira…because…_she faltered. Koide was creepy, weird, and definitely a little mentally unsound. Because he knows what death is like, Hiroko finished, only slightly lamely. Because he's known death and he wouldn't wish that on any other person, or their family.

When Hiroko and Koide had formed the odd friendship they had, it took a while for Hiroko to find out why her newest companion was so strange and, well, the only word for it was unemotional. She'd asked around the university, ran several background checks on him. There hadn't been anything in the papers about Koide – he just wasn't a "Student of the Year" type of person. However, there was something about his sister.

Yimaru was Koide's twin sister, and hers was the name that Hiroko had found most often. Unlike her withdrawn brother, Yimaru was a social butterfly. She had numerous friends, she was a straight-A student, and she won multiple academic awards, some of which were mentioned in the paper when news was slow. Hiroko had found several pictures, some of them professional ones of Yimaru in her white-collar shirt and navy blue skirt uniform, smiling sweetly at the cameraman. Others were shots of Yimaru and who seemed to be her best friend squishing together to get into the frame, holding the camera at arm's-length, which Hiroko had found on social networking sites. But the news article that was the most helpful was the one that had made the front page under big bold letters proclaiming, "LOCAL HIGH-SCHOOL GIRL MURDERED."

In their freshman year of high school, Yimaru had been staying after to help plan Spirit Week, while Koide had chosen to go home instead. She had been happily discussing posters and banners, and ended up going to a friend's house for a study session afterward. She refused her friend's mother's offer to drive her home, assuring them that it was only a few blocks away. The EMTs estimated that she had been murdered at about ten o'clock. Her murderer had gagged her, slit her throat, and thrown her body in a dumpster.

Her parents were devastated. When Hiroko gently asked him about it a while later, Koide confided that his mother didn't eat for days and his father stayed at work longer and longer. Koide himself had been quoted in the newspaper saying, "Whatever monster killed my sister, I'll find him. I'll find him, and I'll see how he likes having his throat slit."

In the newspaper, Yimaru's surname was different than that of Koide. He said it was because their parents were divorced; Yimaru had taken their father's surname, and Koide their mother's. And when their mother got remarried, he changed it again to fit hers.

Hiroko managed to track down one of Yimaru's friends, one of many who had been at her funeral.

"It was awful," the girl had said. "Yimaru was the sweetest girl ever; I couldn't imagine who would want her dead. But Koide, he was a little scary. When he went up to give his speech, at the end he looked at her casket and said, 'I promise, Yimaru, whoever it was won't be alive much longer. I'll gut that son of a bitch.' It was really weird.'

Apparently, Koide hadn't been the same after Yimaru's murder - that was understandable. His old high school friends recalled him quitting the one sport he played – soccer – and becoming very silent. His friends had tried to stick with him, but it was hard when he rarely ever talked. In fact, he rarely did anything outside of school. He focused on his studies, started wearing black, and every so often, he'd start staring off out a window, as if thinking deeply about something. If confronted, he would shake his head and mutter, "Nothing." In other words, he'd become that one creepy kid who drew pictures of the beheaded monkeys in kindergarten.

In college, Hiroko thought that Koide had gotten much better than he had described. He was still awkward and sullen, but he was a tad more social. He had smirked at her and said, "Yeah, well, it was a long time ago. Just a memory."

"Do you miss her?" Hiroko had asked.

Koide sighed and nodded. "Every day. You can't even imagine."

Despite Koide's best efforts for years, Yimaru's killer remained unknown. Hers was considered a cold case and was closed, much to the family's disappointment. Koide had stiffened when Hiroko had put an arm around him, but relaxed and reassured her that he was okay.

Now, Hiroko wasn't so sure.

He'd never kill anyone, though, Hiroko was certain. He knows what it's like to have someone ripped away from you; he'd never make anyone go through that.

The problem with her argument was that it could go either way; even Hiroko could see that. Maybe he was Kira. Maybe he wanted everyone else to feel that way, to feel his pain. Maybe the murder of his sister really had screwed him up more than the therapist he saw for a year after ever could have guessed.

()()()

"Yo, this is Mello," the blond droned. L had put him in charge of monitoring the calls that came to Hiroko's cell phone while she was in isolation, and while that was silent, he got to watch the live video recording of Hiroko's isolation cell to make sure she didn't commit suicide or anything. Near got lucky and was running several more background checks, and Matt was making sure that Koide didn't exist - so far, the evidence looked pretty slim for him. Whereas Mello was stuck putting up with some random chick that had already called three times that morning. She didn't seem to care that it wasn't Hiroko she was talking to, either. Luckily, Mello had figured out a way not to have to deal with whoever the hell it was.

"Y'know, the receptions…-eally…-ad –ere. ...Go...the fuc- ...-way." Mello said brokenly, grabbing the empty foil wrapper of a chocolate bar and crumpling it next to the mouthpiece of the phone. "-ye." He snapped the phone shut. "I hate that girl," he muttered.

"Who?" L asked as he walked in.

"This weird chick who won't stop calling, I think she said her name's Kaede. Whatever her name is, she won't stop calling and it's driving me batshit crazy."

"Ah, yes, Kaede-chan," L said. "Yes, I remember her. Has she said anything useful?"

"No. Nothing in all the, uh, I'm thinking twenty minutes I've been forced to talk to her," Mello said.

"And she knows that you are not Hiroko-chan, answering her phone?"

"I've told her over and over that I don't know who the hell she is. She doesn't care; I think she likes just listening to the pretty noise of the phone ringing."

"Either that or she's hot for ya," Matt called as he joined them. "Oh, wait, never mind, she's probably straight."

"Enough," L said automatically before Mello could respond. "Matt, have you found anything useful?"

"I've checked freakin' everywhere," Matt said. "Koide does not exist anywhere. She's got to be making it all up."

"She's pretty set in her story," Mello commented. "She's been saying random things every so often; she knows we're watching her."

"Of course she does; there is no one else around there," L said. "Only someone incredibly unobservant would think that we would put her in isolation and then just leave her unattended. And of course she insists on Koide being real – otherwise, she'd have to admit to being Kira."

"In any case, she'll be quiet for a while and then look at the camera and spout some theory about how to prove Koide's real. But every time she finds a loophole where she knows we'll find out she's lying, so she shuts up for a while."

"Has she said anything of relevance?" L asked.

"Nothing useful, nope. I wrote down the times she started off, so you'll be able to find 'em easier," Mello commented, sliding a slip of paper across the table.

L glanced at it and said: "Few and far between, then."

"Yup," Mello sighed. "She's pretty boring, actually. All she does is sit around and think most of the time."

"Well there ain't exactly much to do in there, moron," Matt said.

Mello waved his gun warningly at the other man. "Watch it, dickwad," he advised, pushing a strand of hair out of his face.

"Stop being such a girl, Mello," Matt told him.

"How the fuck am I a girl?" Mello demanded angrily.

Matt started counting off on his fingers. "One, your hair. It's long, blond, and you have to have it a certain way or else you freak out, kinda like Light did that one time. Two, you carry your gun in the front of your pants, which might make people think you're making up for something. Three, the pants."

"What's wrong with my pants?" Mello asked irritably.

"They're tight. Chicks wear tight pants."

"They're leather. Tough-ass bikers wear leather," Mello countered. "And what about you and your goggles?"

"You'd never catch a chick wearing these," Matt said with conviction. "And I play video games – totally a guy thing. Sure, there are some girl gamers, but most of them are fat, ugly, and weird. Only a few of them are actually hot. And I smoke."

"Your face is shaped like that one chick from Wammy's," Mello argued. "What was her name again?"

"You want me to remember someone based on their face shape? You're a dumbass Mello, you really are," Matt said.

"I said watch it, dipshit!" Mello yelled. "And I'm not a chick."

"Sure you're not, Mello, sure you're not."

"Near, have you anything to contribute?" L asked, seeing his third successor standing in the doorway, watching Matt and Mello's fight with detached interest.

"Mello looks feminine, Matt is mentally disturbed, and Koide doesn't exist," Near said.

"Thanks for the input," Matt said dryly.

"Freakin' albino dickhead," Mello seethed.

"Mature," Near commented. "Ryuzaki, Koide isn't in any database, legal or not, that either Matt nor I have found yet."

"Thank you Near," L said. "At least one of you is focused on the task at hand, rather than arguing over who appears more feminine."

"Matt started it," Mello claimed.

"You started it by being a pussy," Matt argued.

"Quiet, both of you," L ordered. "Mello, where is that list you made of when she said something?"

Mello flicked the paper at him. L found the tapes of the past few hours and began to listen. Hiroko had come up with two or three different ways to find Koide, but each one was seriously flawed, and she herself admitted that if she were Kira, she could have tampered with it. Over the three days that she had been in isolation, they were almost no further than they had been before. All they knew now was that Koide more than likely wasn't real. But Hiroko certainly seemed to think he was real; or at least, she put on a good show of pretending to think so.

"Did we ever consider a polygraph?" Matt asked. "We could just ask her if he's real, and the thing'll tell us if she's lying."

"Those aren't as accurate as TV shows would like us to think," L said dryly. "Unfortunately for us, beating one of those is relatively simple if you practice."

"Hey, where'd she go?" Matt asked, pointing to the monitor that was supposed to show live footage of Hiroko's cell. She didn't appear to be in it.

"The camera doesn't cover the part of the room that the bathroom's in," Mello said. "She's in there, just out of view of the camera, if ya get what I'm saying. I'm dumbing it down because I know you've never gotten laid, and I doubt you know that chicks don't have dicks."

L sighed. Matt slapped Mello upside the head. "Shut up you dumbfuck, I know all that."

()()()

In fact, Hiroko wasn't using the bathroom. She had seen that the camera couldn't see her, and had flattened herself against the wall. It was downright creepy, knowing someone was watching her – and she didn't even know whom. It could've been L, which wouldn't have been surprising, as she was used to that; if it was the brunette or the weird blond, that would be strange, but not a whole lot better; if it was Near, that'd be really, really creepy. The kid was insanely weird.

_No thanks,_ Hiroko thought. _I'll just stay here for a while. Less disturbing, more helpful. If they won't let me out, then I'll just get out myself._

Yesterday, Hiroko had noticed that the camera went offline for exactly one minute every day. It went off at around one in the morning, presumably to lessen the chance of someone figuring that out. But Hiroko hated sleeping when she knew someone was watching her (well, who would like it? she wondered) so she stayed awake at night sometimes, and slept for a few hours during the day. Night somehow made it creepier; childish, yes, but Hiroko hated the dark. Thankfully, the light from L's laptop was enough, and spared her the indignity of making him leave a light on at night before her isolation.

But if I could just find something…

Hiroko looked around from the wall. As far as she knew, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a disconnected camera and an off-for-a-minute camera. She started making a checklist of everything she had.

She could just barely see the colored wires running from the camera to the wall, so there was something.

She had two fluvoxamine pills, one of which she found in her pocket, the other had been given to her when she was asleep sometime the previous day, which she hadn't taken.

There were her clothes, which probably wouldn't be much help. Her shirt and pants were cotton, and she had sneakers and socks.

And finally, she had a toilet. Water, mainly. A rubber tube, a plastic rod, and that weird floaty ball thing if she could silently get the lid off.

Science wasn't Hiroko's major, but it was Kyo's - her ex-boyfriend. She remembered sitting in a café with him, while he rambled on idly about something he'd looked up in class. Something about how to make a small bomb-like thing with ordinary things. In any case, the fluvoxamine wasn't going to be needed.

Hiroko smirked and went back to her bench, thinking and waiting for one in the morning.

**A/N: Woohoo, more plot! :D Finally! Well, yeah. Reviews would be lovely. ^^**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: Eleventh chapter, yay! ...Okay, after eleven chapters, I've run out of stuff to say with these author's notes. =_= Well, yeah, whatever. Hm...Oh, right! Remember that Mello/Matt one-shot I told y'all about? (Yes, I say "y'all"; I was born in the South, don't judge me). Well, as it turns out, I'm making it into a chapter thing. With random supernatural stuff, ghosts, etc. I'd love it if some of you could check it out! **

**Now, TO THE STORY! :D**

Hiroko watched the camera carefully, lying stiffly on her cold bench. The little red light blinked once every second without failing, except for one minute at around one in the morning.

_5_

_4_

_3_

_2_

_1_

And it stopped. Immediately, Hiroko jumped up and darted to the opposite side of her cell. Hopping carefully up onto the top of the toilet, she took hold of her shirt and jerked hard, tearing off a thick strip at the bottom. When she reached up and over, she could just barely reach the camera and, more importantly, the colored wires behind it. She picked the insulation off from a few of them and held the exposed wiring together, draping the shirt material over the sparks.

"There we go," she muttered as the fabric caught fire. She leaped down, tore the pillowcase off the pillow that was in the corner, and tossed both of them as far down the hallway as she could. Once the fire had spread well enough, she hurriedly ripped her pant legs from the knees down and tossed it toward the fire. And in just a moment, the fire alarm began blaring, the lights dimming and tinting red.

_That ought to distract them, at least for a little while,_ Hiroko thought. Not needing to be stealthy for the moment, she took the lid off the toilet tank and broke off the long metal rod. One end was jagged; perfect. Using it like a knife, Hiroko cut the wires off as close to the camera as she could, and the camera fell to the ground with a crack.

She glanced up at the small window, which, if she stood on her tiptoes, she could barely get a grip on the ledge. Knowing that at any moment, people would be there to extinguish the fire, she hurled the camera at the window as hard as she could. It bounced off and to the ground, and while the lens shattered instantly, the window cracked. Swearing to herself, Hiroko picked it back up and chucked it over and over at the window until it broke completely.

When she jumped up, Hiroko managed to get purchase on the ledge. She knocked out the rest of the glass with the camera and, tossing it over her shoulder, she pulled herself up and through the window. She wasn't as far up as she had feared; she was still on the first floor. As she hit the ground, she let herself fall to the grass and roll, trying not to completely kill her knees.

As soon as she could, Hiroko scrambled up and started running as fast as she could away from the building.

She could just _hear_ L's voice raising her Kira percentage in her head.

()()()

Hiroko skidded to a halt and darted behind a Dumpster. Breathing hard, she leaned her head back against the crumbling brick wall. She figured that she was far enough away from the Task Force building to rest for a minute. Ryuzaki probably already had her picture out all over the area, or he would very, very soon. And it wasn't like someone had conveniently left a fedora or her wallet just outside her cell, either, so disguising herself was out of the question. So was food, she figured. She'd have to find Koide quickly, before too many people knew about her to be able to say they'd seen her.

Ugh, it smelled like rotting garbage in that alley.

"Where would Koide be…?" Hiroko whispered to herself, tilting her head back to look up at the dark sky. It was too early in the morning for him to be at school…most stores were closed…but Koide once said that he walked around when he couldn't sleep, didn't he? And his house was just a few blocks away from…

The cemetery. Hiroko got up and stuck close to the filthy alley walls, looking carefully both ways down the street before walking swiftly up the sidewalk, glancing around to watch out for sketchy people.

The cemetery where his sister was buried. Hiroko could remember once afternoon, just a few months after she'd met Koide. The two were sitting on the university lawn, comparing Computer Tech homework and Hiroko was trying to make idle chitchat. When she asked Koide what he did in his spare time, he very seriously answered that he sometimes liked to go to the cemetery where his sister's grave was. He would sometimes place a flower on the grass, or wipe off the top of her headstone. Most of the time, though, he would just sit beside the headstone and talk to her.

Hiroko had asked Kaede once if that was normal; the girl had assured her that grieving friends and family often talked to their deceased loved ones, just to comfort themselves.

There were some creepy characters walking around, Hiroko noticed. Some of them were your typical alcoholic hobos, and others were drugged-out obese men who yelled at trashcans. And while Hiroko was moderately certain that she could take care of herself, she still kept her head down and eyes staring at the ground, one hand in her pocket as if she had a knife or something. If anything happened, though, she'd probably just have to point at them with a literal hand-gun. Yeah, hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

When she arrived at the graveyard, it was easy to hop the short stone fence that separated the sidewalk and road from the grassy hills, spotted with gravestones. Hiroko tried not to get freaked out from every little noise, but graveyards were just creepy. And at night, they were even creepier. And when you were looking for your friend who may or may not be one of the most deadly serial killers of all time, well, that just about topped the list of creepiness.

Rubbing her arms to warm up – damn, it was cold, especially in a t-shirt that she'd ripped half the bottom off of – Hiroko attempted to recall where Yimaru was buried. _Maybe five headstones across, seven rows up?_ Hiroko wondered. Sure, it was worth a shot, at the very least.

Five gravestones across and seven rows up, Hiroko was looking at the grave of someone named Yuudai, who had died in '87. Nope, not right. Crap, this wasn't good! She had to find Koide before the Task Force found her. _Okay, was it…three headstones across and five rows up?_

()()()

"I don't get it; why did she set a fire?" Matsuda asked. The Task Force was gathered around a large table. Stacked on the table were snapshots from street video cameras around the city, tapes of their videos, and numerous other things that were supposed to be used to find where their suspect went. L was glaring at them all in disappointment; Mello looked frustrated, and was in turn glaring at Near, who looked smug, if anything. Everyone appeared worried, crossing arms and shifting feet as they waited for someone else to say something first. And in the end, it was Matsuda who broke the silence.

"Probably to distract us," Light muttered back to him. "Gives her more time to get as far away from the building as possible."

"Mello, what did your mind tell you when I ordered you to watch her?" L asked scathingly.

"Hey! I watched it, as instructed!" Mello said loudly. "The camera stops giving feed for about a minute every day."

"And you thought that it was irrelevant?"

"I thought that she'd be sleeping, since it happens at one in the morning," Mello defended.

"And why does this happen? Don't we have cameras that don't go out for one minute every day?" L demanded.

"Uh, by doing that, it saves energy, which is good for the environment," Aizawa said, not meeting L's gaze. "The building was running up a huge electricity usage, so we switched to these cameras. By going out for a minute, at alternating intervals of course, we save—"

"We save energy, and lose our suspect," L reminded. "And there is a high probability now of her being Kira. So, to save electricity, we have essentially released someone who is more than likely the most horrendous serial killer of our time."

In truth, L couldn't be extremely angry with either of them, though they were idiots. Really, it was his fault as much as anyone's, he thought.

"Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"We didn't think that anyone would stay up until one in the morning to figure it out," Aizawa said.

"Ryuzaki, we get it, we all fucked up, especially Mello," Matt said. "What're we going to do about it now?"

"As of now, there is not much we can do; most of everyone is sleeping. And I doubt the few people actually on the street at one twenty-two in the morning are credible witnesses," L said. "However, as for now, we are able to do a few things. Light-kun, construct a simple profile of Hiroko-chan and forward it to all businesses within the area, and put alert all police stations and put out an announcement on television."

"Media, on it," Light said, and briskly swept out of the room. L turned to the rest of the Task Force. Most of them looked dead tired, yawning and propping their heads up. Matsuda's eyes were half-closed and he had his head down on his folded arms.

"Now that Hiroko-chan is out, we must be even more careful than ever. I want at least two guards at the entrances, and everyone is to wear hats when they venture outside. Oh, and there will be no using of your actual names until she is back in custody. Even within this building."

Eventually, everyone went back to their desks, but L stayed at the long table, looking over the mounds of grainy snapshots, taken out of street cameras that had a fair quantity of bird crap and hobo spit and general filth smeared on the lenses. Wonderful.

She wouldn't take her car; she knew that an APB on it will be one of the first things they would do. She most likely wouldn't go back to her apartment, but he decided to send some people just in case. What she would do, though, depended on whether she was telling the truth about Koide. If he does not exist, and she knew it, she would try to get out of the country as soon as possible. However, if he does exist, or if he doesn't but she believes he does, Hiroko would try to find him.

L sighed and stared at the piles of pictures. The way she held herself, the tone in her voice, the desperation to make them believe, all could point either to lying or truth. But the details, the ideas to catch the possibly-fake person, just her careful thought into the idea – careful, but not too detailed – seemed to say that whether Koide was real or not, Hiroko believed that he existed.

How do you catch a person who may not be real?

()()()

Turns out, five graves up and four across wasn't it, either. Neither was six graves up and two across. And neither were any of the other combinations Hiroko had thought of. And what was worse, now she was lost in a graveyard. At night. With a possible Kira in the same area. And the police might or might not be looking for her.

"Well, it actually might not be able to get much worse this time," Hiroko told herself. "Have I seen that gravestone before…? …Maybe."

Wandering through a graveyard at night actually wasn't as disturbing as television shows made it look. It was actually kind of soothing, and if a serial killer wasn't lurking about somewhere near her, Hiroko might actually have liked it. However, since Koide probably was nearby, she decided that she wanted to get out of there, or find him.

"Okay, I know I've seen that gravestone before; how many gravestones can there be featuring naked angel babies?" Hiroko asked herself softly. "That's kind of strange, really. I hope when I die, my gravestone doesn't have naked angels on it. That'd be strange…"

Not as strange as talking to yourself in a graveyard, but whatever. Koide's somewhere, and at least talking to yourself could alert him to where you are.

Hiroko was pretty sure that whatever happened to Koide, whatever it was that made him like that, he was definitely a psychopath.

"Nobody could be perfectly sane and kill that many people," Hiroko murmured to herself.

She whipped around as someone chuckled slowly behind her. "Oh, couldn't they?" Koide asked, the smile on his face not quite reaching his eyes. Just like it never did.

**A/N: What did I ever have to say in these, either? Meh, whatever. Yeah, reviews would be nice, both on this and on my new random angst/ghost Mello/Matt story. ^^**


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